Earning a 10 isn’t an easy task in gymnastics

TUSCALOOSA | You see it at almost every meet at the University of Alabama.

A gymnast does something that looks absolutely amazing, she beams a wide grin, her teammates and coaches go crazy, and fans hold up signs calling for a perfect 10.

Only she doesn’t get it, leaving the regular crowd of 10,000-plus scratching their heads, wondering exactly what was lacking or what the judges were thinking. Obviously, it’s not quite that simple, and as one former national official described, “It’s not like if you make the basket you get two points.”

“Our sport doesn’t make it easy on the average fan,” said Carole Ide, president of the national association of women’s gymnastics judges. “It’s a very complicated sport. We have so many different sets of rules for each level of competition. We have one set internationally at the Olympic level, which we’ve gone to a very different level, that is very different from the developmental level. Over and above that, collegiate coaches have their own system. I think they’re all appropriate.”

The colleges have stayed with an elevated 10.0-point scoring system that’s fan-friendly, even though it’s not nearly as subjective as a causal observer might think.

Add other elements, like at today’s NCAA Northeast Regional at Coleman Coliseum with simultaneous competition for six rotations, and it’s visual overload for just about anybody.

“It‘s very hard to watch for spectators, it’s a six-team meet, obviously only four can compete at a time, which means two are always on byes,” said Stanford assistant coach Mike Lorenzen, who is also president of the National Association of Collegiate Gymnastics Coaches/Women. “As a consequence, the audience never has an idea of who’s ahead until you reach a point that everyone’s done the same number of rotations, which doesn’t happen until halfway through the meet.

“The thing to look for is major mistakes. The thing about this sport is the parity and that’s when the door opens for the Cinderellas to take advantage.”

Meets like this have four judges for each event, usually two from the region and then two national, who sit completely apart. The thinking behind that is one might see something that the others don’t.

A perfect example was at the recent SEC Championship in Nashville, when scores for an Alabama beam routines ranged from 9.55 to 9.85. The reason why was from his or her angle one judge didn’t see a requirement completed and deducted the appropriate points.

Ideally, scores between the judges should never deviate more than .2.

“From the judging perspective, it’s really, really cut and dry,” Ide said, later adding. “It’s never always perfect. We’re human. There are likes and dislikes and different levels of experience.”

A regulation balance beam is 16 feet long, four feet high and only four inches wide, and like the uneven bars and floor exercise, the base score is 9.5.

“Everybody has to do a certain amount of elements in their routine and every element has a value,” said Dana Duckworth, the 1992-93 NCAA beam champion and Alabama assistant coach about the A-through-D levels of increasing difficulty. “The way the rules are set up, you can get combination bonuses. So you can do a jump and a skill together and you’ll get an additional tenth for doing that combination.”

Specific requirements include an acrobatic series (with two flight elements), a dance series (with two elements), a leap or jump requiring a 180-degree split, a full 360-degree turn on the beam without the use of hands, and the dismount. Failure to do any is an automatic .2 deduction. Smaller deductions include lack of variety (like not doing a forward and backward element), and not using the whole beam.

For the dance series, gymnasts are required to show at least two different shapes: pike, tuck, straddle, split, etc, in leaps and/or jumps. Like with over events, showing a little personality can only help a score.

How all that is put together is what promotes a 9.5 routine to 10.0 level, although the bigger the bonus the larger risk.

“Let’s say she bends her leg,” Duckworth said. “That’s a D-level skill. So she got her tenth, but then she got her tenth taken away because she bent her leg. So was it really worth doing? So what you basically do is choreographing a routine to have a 10.0 start value, with the least amount of execution (deductions).”

Floor is by far the event in which gymnasts can express themselves the most, which is a major reason why Ashley O’Neal always leads off for the Tide.

“What to look for, stuck landing for sure, you want to see a lot of showmanship, playing to the crowd and judges,” said former Tide gymnast Dee Foster-Theriault, the 1990 NCAA All-Around champ. “Lots of charisma, personality. Just playfulness, a lot of energy.”

Specifically, gymnasts are required to do one acrobatic series consisting of three flight elements, two directly connected saltos or one series with two saltos, three different saltos within the exercise, and there has to be a dance series with at least two elements (leaps/jumps/hops or turns), one of which has to achieve a certain degree of difficulty.

Again, the base score is 9.5, with various moves and combinations serving as bonuses for the 10.0 possibility, and some gymnasts are good enough to make changes midway through their performance — either to hold back a move they know won’t finish correctly, or add something to compensate for a previous mistake.

“Sometimes teams will plan for that, they’ll have an emergency connection, or the emergency thing to do,” Theriault said. “Sometimes they just don’t have the arsenal of tricks to be able to do that.

“One of the bigger things is to not land with their chest down, and they can’t go out of bounds, obviously.”

Similar to the other events, the close is considered the most important part of the routine and competitors always want to finish strong.

All events in collegiate gymnastics start with a base score of 9.5, except vault, which is much more “What you see is what you get.”

Coaches notify judges beforehand what will be performed and there’s a chart with the maximum score for each possible vault with the maximum score if done precisely and without deductions. Thus, just about everyone does a vault with a 10.0 value.

“It’s so quick, and the landing makes the difference because it’s the last thing the judges see,” four-time NCAA champion Ashley Miles said. “In college gymnastics, your enthusiasm counts. I really believe that.”

The most common deductions are for touching the vault table with only one or with no hands, poor technique or form, and failing to land cleanly with no hops, steps or falls. FYI, anything before the springboard doesn’t actually count toward the score.

Overall, there are five basic vault categories for women, depending on their entry: without saltos (summersaults or flips), handspring forward, Tsukahara (half turn off springboard), Yurchenko and round-offs.

The most popular vault at the collegiate level is the Yurchenko, named after Soviet gymnast Natalia Yurchenko (early 1980s), when the gymnast does a round-off onto the springboard and a back handspring onto the vault. From there the gymnast has a wide range of possibilities, from a simple tuck to a triple-twist layout. Even more complicated is adding a half-twist before the springboard, with another half-twist after.

“Height, distance, squareness, body position, you always want to be straight,” said Miles, who would go last in the Crimson Tide rotation because she had the biggest vaults.

“You want to look for position, that their legs are together not piked into the body, and straight as well.”

Each routine has a number of requirements, including a minimum of two bar changes, two flight elements, one with a longitudinal axis turn, and the dismount meeting certain difficulty requirements.

“Spectacular release moves, or pirouettes, change in direction, and body lines, execution we would call it, form,” said Marie Robbins, a four-time All-American who was on the 1988 NCAA Championship team who is now the senior women’s administrator for Alabama athletics.

“You watch a Kayla Hoffman or an Ashley Priess, they look at lot different, more crisp than other people. You watch Georgia’s Courtney Kuppets do bars, it looks effortless.

“Is it workmanlike, or is it very smooth?”

A good routine will also include numerous grip and directional changes. Something else to watch is the precision of the handstands. If they aren’t vertical, it’s a markdown.

“That’s why coaches are always standing to the side during the regular season because they’re looking to see if they hit vertical,” Robbins said. “Obviously they won’t be able to do that here, they have to stand to the side with everyone else.”

Consistency of difficulty counts, with judges looking for the toughest elements to be equally distributed, and not bunched into one move or series.

Similar to the other events, the dismount is crucial.

“It’s a tenth per step,” Lorenzen said. “If all five have steps that’s fifth-tenths, that’s equivalent to a fall.”

— Compiled by

Christopher Walsh