After introducing our 2015 NCAA master schedule last week, we got a lot of questions about NCAA gymnastics. Don’t worry! We’re here to help. Here’s a guide that will get you started, and as the 2015 season gets closer, we’ll go into further detail including previews of the teams to watch this year, what to expect from the freshmen, which recently departed seniors will be missed, and anything else you’d possibly want to know.

Today’s introduction to the sport has the basics about what to expect in general. If we missed something you think is crucial when it comes to understanding NCAA gym, let us know in the comments!

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THE GYMNASTS

Who competes in NCAA gymnastics? It’s actually a pretty awesome mix, including level 9 gymnasts all the way up through elites, including 2009 World Champion Bridget Sloan. The elites tend to concentrate among the top teams – Florida has been recruiting the greatest number of top elites in recent years, though you’ll also see a bunch scattered throughout UCLA, Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma, LSU, Stanford, Michigan, Nebraska, and Utah.

These bigger top-level schools also recruit the best of the level 10 gymnasts, who can often outshine their elite teammates. Since the routine composition is different from elite without the push toward high difficulty coming into play (we’ll get to that in a bit!), everyone’s on an even playing field. A level 10 gymnast who attempted elite but couldn’t qualify typically ends up kicking butt in college where crisp execution is more highly-valued than difficulty.

Level 10 gymnasts make up the majority of Divison I collegiate athletes, and there can be a wide disparity between gymnasts at this level. The top teams attract the top level 10s, but that doesn’t mean the other teams are inherently weak. You’ll still find fierce talent and solid routines on pretty much every team.

Division II and Division III teams usually showcase a mix of both level 10 and level 9 gymnasts. The level 10s here likely didn’t have the quality of skills needed to make an impact on Division I teams, but they’re still strong in their own right. Often meets will include a mix of teams from all three divisions of competition, and it’s not unusual to see a Division II team beat a weaker Division I squad.

Another term you’ll probably hear when talking about gymnasts at the collegiate level is “walk-on.” A gymnast who “walks on” to a team is typically a weaker level 10 or sometimes a strong level 9 who wouldn’t normally be recruited by a top school (or wouldn’t be recruited period in some cases). A gymnast invited to be a walk-on doesn’t receive an athletic scholarship and doesn’t tend to make a lot of competition lineups, but chooses to accept the walk-on offer for a number of reasons.

What you’ll see most often is a level 10 who was recruited by lower-ranked teams and possibly even offered scholarships, but who has a “connection” to a higher level team. Most girls in this situation live in the state where they become walk-ons. For example, a girl who grows up down the road from the University of Georgia and makes it her dream to one day become a member but who doesn’t quite have the ability required will choose to be a walk-on there over accepting a scholarship at another school.

Walk-ons sometimes make it big, and in rare cases, can eventually be offered scholarships if they’ve shown improvement throughout their careers. Some become regular fixtures in a team’s lineup, especially if they’re strong on a certain event on which the team shows weakness. Some compete exhibition routines, where they’re allowed to show their routines to a crowd to get the experience but without it affecting the team’s score. Some don’t make lineups and don’t care – they still support the team in other ways.

Finally, international elites are a big part of NCAA. Some top international competitors – mostly from Great Britain, Canada, and Australia – become huge on the NCAA scene. Some will compete at World Championships in the fall and then go right back to school to compete NCAA in the spring.

THE COMPETITIONS

The best thing about NCAA gymnastics is that there are meets every single week. Elite can be frustrating because the top gymnasts only compete a few times a year, but during NCAA season (January through April) there’s always something going on!

College teams compete once a week, typically on Friday nights or at some point during the weekend. The majority of meets will feature one team against another team, though you’ll often see tri-meets or quads thrown in. The host team for each meet will begin on vault and compete in the Olympic order – vault, bars, beam, floor – while the visiting team begins on bars and then continues with vault, floor, and lastly, beam.

During a meet, each team includes six gymnasts on each event lineup. Six gymnasts will compete, but only five scores will count. Individual scores are out of a 10.0 with the maximum team score being 200. While one objective is to beat the other team or teams against whom you’re competing, the bigger objective is to score as high as possible, as your score determines your team’s season ranking, which is important for postseason…but we’ll get to that.

Most meets are streamed online, sometimes for free but usually for a fee. Those available for a fee are usually part of a package offered by CBS Sports, costing somewhere in the neighborhood of about $10 a month depending on the kind of access you want. When we update our weekly schedules throughout the meet season, we’ll include all streaming info so you don’t miss a thing!

THE ROUTINES

Fans of elite gymnastics sometimes say they don’t bother with NCAA gym because the routines are “easier.” It’s true you won’t see routines we get from top level elites, and yes, it can get tiresome to watch hundreds of FTYs on vault all season long, but that doesn’t mean all routines are boring. In fact, because the requirements in NCAA routines are much less strict, it gives the gymnasts more freedom to be creative.

This creativity is especially noticeable on beam and floor, and it comes through in skills, combinations of skills, dance, and artistry. Even though the NCAA code of points doesn’t require as many skills and though the difficulty level is lower, gymnasts still sometimes go all-out with what they can do.

Perhaps most famous is Danusia Francis of UCLA performing a side aerial done sideways on the beam. She actually competes this skill connected into her gainer full dismount. It’s not something you’d pretty much ever see in elite because the dismount isn’t very valuable and the prep takes a bit too much time, but it’s one of the most awesome series in existence.

The artistry on floor is especially awesome, because again due to fewer restrictions in the NCAA code compared to the elite code, the gymnasts are given more freedom to play. It’s very rare to see stiff or wooden performers on floor, and whether you like the style of routines or not, there’s always a tremendous amount of soul and personality that goes into each one. The music can also be entertaining, and it’s not rare to see pop, big band, movie themes, classical, and rock all in one rotation.

Though the push for difficulty isn’t like it is in elite gymnastics, a good number of gymnasts tend to go all-out in their routines. There were at least five gymnasts competing full-twisting double layout bars dismounts last year, for example – more than you normally see in elite.

Elite routines are so packed full of required skills they don’t really have the endurance for more than a full-in dismount, but collegiate routines make it possible! You’ll also see some elite-level combinations and dismounts on beam, and floor tumbling can be pretty jam-packed as well – double layouts, full-ins, punch double fronts, double Arabians, and even full-twisting double layouts aren’t rare.

I think one of the best aspects of collegiate routines is how clean they are. Form and technique are clean and sharp in college gym, so you almost never see sloppy legs in twists, split leaps not hitting 180, and falling out of turns. Sticks are also highly encouraged. The majority of routines look so polished and crisp, it actually looks like each gymnast puts years and years of effort into every single skill, compared to elite where the desire for difficulty can lead to some messy attempts.

THE RANKINGS

Ahhhh, rankings. They can be so fun and so frustrating all at once.

Rankings are determined by how well a team performs in the regular season of competition. The regular season includes every meet aside from championship meets, which is called the post season. Every Monday, the team’s scores from the previous week are thrown into a database and averaged. Whoever has the best average is considered the top team in the nation, so you can see, it’s more about scoring big than winning every single meet. Your favorite team could lose three weeks in a row but earn a 197.5 – compare this to a team that wins three weeks in a row but only with a 197.0. The losing team will still rank higher.

After six meets, the ranking system changes from averaging scores to the RQS system. This is where it can get a bit confusing, but keep reading if you like math. The RQS factors in the top three away scores and the next three highest scores, home or away. Drop the highest score of the six and average the remaining five and bam – that’s your RQS ranking score.

For example – say your team has competed in nine meets, five home and four away. The home scores are 199.2, 198.8, 198.6, 198.4, and 198.2. The away scores are 199, 198.9, 198.8, and 198.7. I would first take the top three away scores – 199, 198.9, and 198.8. Then I would take the next top scores, which would include the 199.2 and 198.8 home scores and the 198.7 away score, since it’s higher than the remaining home scores. Of these six scores, 199.2 is the highest so I would drop that and average the rest, coming out to 198.84.

Why RQS? You can probably see that it puts more emphasis on away meets. Judges at home tend to be a bit more generous than judges on the road. If your team gets all scores of 199 at home but is only managing 196 on the road, your RQS will be lower than your actual average. If you perform as consistently on the road as you do at home, however, your RQS and averages will be pretty close. The RQS system provides more accuracy in in determining the top teams in the nation, which gets important when it comes time for the postseason.

Okay, great. So WHY do rankings matter for postseason? We’ll talk about that in the next section.

THE CHAMPIONSHIPS

You made it through your first regular season of NCAA, but now it’s time for the best part of the whole season – the championship meets.

Championships in Division I competition can be divided into three parts – the conference championship, the regional championship, and the national championship.

The conference championship has pretty much nothing to do with determining an outcome of the season, but is rather a fun way for teams in the same conference to compete against one another for a title. Every single gymnastics team is part of a conference. Some conferences are big – i.e. the Big Ten and the SEC both have a ton of gymnasts – while others are small – the Big 12 only has three gymnastics teams.

Each team is invited to its conference championships – there are no qualification procedures here. Teams compete and whoever wins the title gets bragging rights, but it has no direct bearing on the rest of postseason. There are often great rivalries in each conference, such as the Georgia and Alabama rivalry in the SEC, making it a fun and exciting event for teams and their fans, but the winner doesn’t get special treatment or anything later on.

Regional championships are why the rankings are important. The top 36-ranked teams are invited to compete in one of six regional championships around the country, and the rankings determine where the top 18 teams are seeded. Here’s the breakdown for regional seeds:

So the teams ranked first, 12th, and 13th all seed into the first regional, the teams ranked 2nd, 11th, and 14th seed into the second regional…and so on. The teams ranked 19th through 36th are distributed to each regional location based on geography rather than through seeding.

Regional placement then determines nationals. The top two teams from each regional championship qualify to nationals, meaning 12 teams total will get to compete at the NCAA Championships, the final meet of the season. In addition to teams, a set number of individual all-arounders and event specialists can also qualify to compete at nationals, though this can be tricky and complicated so let’s just focus on the team, shall we?

At nationals, the 12 teams will compete in the two subdivisions of the qualifying event, which also serves as the all-around final and the event final qualification. The top three teams from each subdivision moves on to the team final, called the Super Six. The winner of the Super Six is that year’s national champion, and then event finals are held the following afternoon.

This is how championships work for Division I gymnastics, but there are other championships thrown in as well, including the Division III regional and national championships and a separate nationals called the USAG Collegiate Championships, which is for Division II and the lower-ranked Division I teams. We’ll get into all of these as the season progresses.

THE ATMOSPHERE

College gymnastics is all about the team. Though there is some individual glory – athletes who have the top scores in the all-around and on each event are recognized each week and there are all-around and event finals at nationals – the most important prize comes with the team’s performance.

It means the atmosphere at meets is INSANE. I’ve been in an arena with six NCAA teams warming up and the screaming – oh LORD, the screaming. And that’s just for warmups! The support these girls have for one another is insane. During a floor routine, the whole team lines up on the sidelines to scream support and to perform some bits of choreography along with the athlete competing. When a gymnast finishes her vault, the entire squad rushes up to give her high fives, and then they all jog back down the runway together.

This kind of enthusiasm can be a bit jarring when you’re used to elite competition, where the focus is often on an individual’s success aside from once or twice a year when a major team medal is at stake. This is changing a bit, with greater numbers of elites showing support for their teammates and friends at every stage of the competition, but nothing compares to the NCAA team atmosphere.

You should also know that for some reason, NCAA gymnastics PACKS. THE. HOUSE. It’s not unusual to see 14,000 people show up for a single meet. Most of those in attendance know very little about the sport, but support their home team the way they support football or basketball.

There’s so much team pride, and it’s awesome for the gymnasts to walk out listening to thousands of people screaming their names every week. It can get to be a bit much when home crowds take things too far and jeer or attempt to distract the opposing teams, but for the most part people are positive and are there to see an exciting, close competition.

Article by Lauren Hopkins