The only constant is change
Welcome back everybody. How was your offseason knowing that the reigning national champs are still the LSU Tigers? I hope it was nice. LSU Gym 101 is set for Monday, December 16th at 6:00 p.m. That is fewer than three weeks from the time of writing. The season itself starts on Friday, January 3rd, and that’s barely more than a month away.
A lot has changed since April, and I want to make sure y’all get on the same page that I am once we reach the start of the season. Each week, I’ll be doing a preview of some aspect of the upcoming season so we can jump right into things come the night the banner drops. I want to start with a look at the overall landscape of the sport coming into 2025.
Conference realignment
Here’s a quick refresher on how the power conferences look for the 2025 season. Oklahoma left the Big 12 for the SEC, a move that every SEC fan is totally fine with and not at all worried about. The Pac-12 collapsed, leaving Oregon State without a conference for the 2025 season. UCLA and Washington left the Pac-12 for the Big 10, a conference which now has 12 teams and will be holding their conference championship in three sessions over two days. The ACC added gymnastics in 2024, and now the conference gains two geographically appropriate members: Cal and Stanford. They join Pitt, UNC, NC State and Clemson. The Big 12 is the forgotten gym conference since Oklahoma owned it. BYU, West Virginia, Iowa State and Denver have new friends from the old Pac-12: Arizona, Arizona State and Utah.
Changes to meet procedures
You will notice that meets are going to run differently in the 2025 season. First, the NAWGJ introduced the delayed conference. One of the worst things during a meet is when judges need to figure out a score for a routine that went horribly wrong. This happened after the first floor routine of the 2023 Denver Regional Final, and it can mess with the gymnasts who have to go afterward. If that situation comes up again, the judges can flash a red card to let everyone know that they’re going to save the conference for figuring out the score until the break between rotations.
Speaking of judging conferences, those might increase in 2025. In 2023, Rachel Rybicki of Alabama got a 10.0/9.80 split on her beam routine vs LSU. That didn’t require a conference because the rules stated that judges could be within a range of 0.20 on any routine that averaged at least 9.5. That’s changed for the regular season. Now, judges must be within a range of 0.10 on any routines that average at least a 9.8. This would’ve applied to two LSU routines in 2024: Aleah Finnegan’s 9.925 on floor vs Arkansas (10.0/9.85 split) and Konnor McClain’s 9.875 on beam vs Alabama (9.95/9.80 split).
Changes to rules on routines
The rules changes to routines are something I don’t fully understand as well as I do the rules regarding meet procedures because rules about routines use a lot of references to the code of points, a book I do not own. It’s far easier, therefore, to explain what the rules committee wanted to address and how people are going to adjust to the changes.
Bars
First of all, the Maloney to Pak bars routine was becoming too common and every bars coach wanted to kill it, including Florida’s. They wrote specific provisions to make that combo not worth enough points to start from a 10.0 when done in the standard way (see Kiya Johnson and Alexis Jeffrey for examples of what I mean). Coaches really wanted to get gymnasts to do high-bar release moves, something Level 10 gymnasts are expected to do.
They didn’t get that. There are multiple ways to do a 10.0 SV routine without a high-bar release. Anyone who does a Van Leeuwen (or Shaposh Half depending on the commentator) can get around it. Certain handstands can also build up the bonus necessary to make Maloney to Pak routines still viable for some gymnasts. In short, they won’t be as common, but they aren’t dead yet.
Floor
Everyone hated two-pass floor routines, or at least ones that were far too easy. Haleigh Bryant is an amazing gymnast, but her second pass on floor, front layout to Rudi, was one that was far too common across the country and far too easy to keep with the spirit of the rule change that let it happen in the first place. In general, combination passes are no longer given as much of a boost in two-pass routines. Some two-pass routines will get a 10.0 SV in 2025, and a common example I’ve seen given is Michigan State’s Delanie Harkness. Many gymnasts who used front layout to Rudi as a “cheat code” are going to have to either add a third pass and sacrifice some stamina or increase the difficulty of their passes and leap series. They’ve known about this since before the offseason began, but it’ll be interesting to see what this means.
Next week, I’ll take y’all on a quick trip around the SEC to look at the changes to each of the other eight programs that didn’t win the 2024 NCAA championship.