It’s time for the 45th edition of You Asked, The Gymternet Answered! We apologize if we haven’t gotten to your question yet, but we try to answer in the order in which they were received. Something you want to know? Ask us anonymously by going through the contact form at the bottom of the page.

Do you think Gabby Douglas is going to get her Ono back? What vault do you think she is training?

I haven’t heard anything about Gabby training her Ono, though I’d love to see her do it and think she needs more impressive skills like that in her routine if she wants to contend for a spot on the Olympic team. We just saw video of her training a Chow half which is great, and outside of bars I have heard that she is training an Amanar, and wouldn’t be surprised if she brings it back to competition at some point over the next year. Her DTY looked really strong in Italy, so it’s only a matter of time before she brings in the upgrade!

Why did Emily Gaskins switch from CGA to Intensity? After Lexie Priessman moving on as well, is this indicative of a bigger issue at CGA?

I’m not sure of the circumstances surrounding either gymnast, so I can really only speculate, but in Emily’s case I’ve heard it’s because she wanted to move back home. But typically when I’m asked about CGA, I tend to say straight up that Mary Lee Tracy is an excellent but tough coach. Some gymnasts do very well with her, if they have the maturity to understand that when she is giving criticism, it’s all business, not personal. It’s like working in an office and having bosses yelling at you…you have to realize that it’s not because you’re terrible or dumb or doing a bad job. It’s just learning to deal with difficult people and understanding not to take it personally.

Some gymnasts, like Lexie, are definitely stubborn and may want to fight back, making a relationship like that hard…and others are more meek (especially the really young ones) and may respond by crying or thinking they’re not good enough and getting really down on themselves. I think Amelia Hundley, who has always been very mature for her age, has a good relationship with her because she is able to understand that it’s all business. A lot of older gymnasts (like Kayla Williams, Kim Zmeskal and Dominique Moceanu when they went back to the sport, Ashley Priess) got along very well with MLT whereas younger gymnasts new to elite can’t handle her personality. She’s just a very no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is kind of coach and I totally get why some girls can’t work with her, but I don’t think it’s really a ‘problem’…I think you just have to know how to handle her, because when you do, she can do great work with you.

Do you play fantasy gymnastics? If yes, can you share your drafting strategy and how it’s worked out for you?

I don’t currently, but did back in the day…first in 2011 when a random club gym created their own version of an NCAA fantasy gym and then again in 2013 when it was introduced in its current incarnation. My strategy was to choose gymnasts I knew were strong in the all-around, and who typically did all four events, because then you know that you can put them up and not have to worry about your team not having enough gymnasts on each event.

I also tend to not go for freshmen. It worked out for me that I chose Bridget Sloan (and got her!) in 2013 because she ended up being fantastic but I think because freshman year is an iffy time for many new NCAA girls, it can be hard to judge what they’ll end up doing? Like, had I played this year I may have assumed Mack Brannan would be doing more than vault and bars, and I maybe wouldn’t have assumed Brianna Brown would have played such a crucial AA role for Michigan. So yeah, stick to what you know, basically.

Also, going back to all-arounders, I guess I’d tend to chase the gymnasts who were all-around standouts in non-top 10 programs. These are the girls who you KNOW are going to do all four events every week because their teams really rely on them…so like, Nina McGee, Sasha Tsikhanovich, Krystal Welsh, Sidney Sanabria-Robles, Caitlin Brown, Amanda Wellick, Giana O’Connor, Lisa Burt, Allison Northey, Meghan Pflieger, Allie Flores, Makenzie Johnson, Cami Drouin-Allaire, Sarah Landes, Morgan Lane, Cami Guyer, Michaela Woodford, Sydney Hoerr, Brittni Watkins, Brittany Stover, Gabrielle May…these are the girls I would have gone after. They’re less likely to be drafted because they’re not as well-known as the big AAers like Bridget Sloan or Kytra Hunter or Sam Peszek.

If you can get a team full of girls like these and then maybe a few top girls who consistently get 9.95s on their strong events (like a Georgia Dabritz for bars or a Mincie Hall for floor) then you’d be set.

Now that you can trade, I don’t think it’s as difficult to plan a draft strategy because there are always people willing to trade and if you’re short a gymnast on bars one week, you can always trade for a bars gymnast. But yeah, go for the lower key all-arounders because they’re generally quite good and often are overlooked by those who get blinded by the top ten gymnasts.

How many years of eligibility does UCLA’s Peng Peng Lee have left? She’s a junior but she just made her competitive debut. Can you red shirt more than 1 year?

You can only redshirt one year, so she still has two years left in her eligibility. Basically the rule is that you have five years to use up your four years of eligibility, so because two of those five years were spent being out with injury, she only has three competitive years available to her.

Do you think artistry of gymnastics skills actually matter in this quad? I really love the perfect straight knees, toe points, and splits from the Chinese, yet it seems that the judges don’t value such impeccable precision, handing out similar E scores to others that have solid skills but don’t execute as perfectly, ie with flexed feet in leaps that aren’t fully hit. The skill is there, but it lacks beauty. Shouldn’t FIG impose some deductions in this area instead of having rules such as no standing in the corner on floor to prepare for tumbling?

Well, I think you’re a little confused, because artistry has nothing to do with how well a skill is executed. Artistry is the performance of a routine, and gymnasts can incur deductions from not having artistic performances, but these deductions have nothing to do from how well a skill (whether dance or acro) is executed. So lack of toe point or bent knees does not mean lack of artistry. These are form deductions, and I think for the most part the form deductions taken from each country are pretty fair, in that there’s no clear bias between one and another.

While there are definitely some beautiful Chinese gymnasts who can execute really nice leaps, many Chinese gymnasts rack up a slew of deductions on their acro elements, which definitely aren’t very clean, especially on floor. The thing is, you as a fan watching at home have no idea what the judges are deducting for (even if you think you do). A Chinese gymnast might have perfect leaps on floor but get a 7.9 for a hit routine because her tumbling is atrocious, whereas an American gymnast might have powerful and clean tumbling but get slammed on leaps and other dance elements, but get an 8.3 because her routine doesn’t have as many dance elements as it has acro skills.

So really, you can’t state with certainty that judges are purposely not judging dance elements as strictly as they’re judging acro elements because as a fan with no insight into their scoresheets, you have zero idea. Mykayla Skinner, for example, is certainly docked a TON for her lack of precision on dance elements on floor, which is why her E score is generally quite low despite her mostly solid tumbling. Similarly, Chinese gymnasts with poor tumbling ability are docked there, but aren’t docked on their dance elements if hit correctly.

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Article by Lauren Hopkins