In the news, Uncle Tim, Spencer, and Jessica chat about:
- Why Uncle Tim is soooooooo over the NCAA vs. Elite debate.
- Which elite superstars we are following in college.
- Our top skills, hilarious commentary fails and squeal worthy moments from the first week of full NCAA competition.
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- Why water bottles should never, ever, ever be on a gym floor. Ever.
- Spencer’s first “Balance Beam Situation” Code of Points rule.
- Which school all the hipster kids will be fan-girling over this year. Haaaai, George Washington with your 196.
- Reasons why the rare and hardly ever seen in the wild, side tumbling pass for women should be worshipped and appreciated (Thank you, Sadiqua Bynum of UCLA)
- Ebee didn’t compete with a concussion.
- Banning the WOGAtchev
- Sabrina Schwab’s (Utah) floor routine.
- Nina McGee’s 10!
- A review of the new vault values in college gymnastics.
Our weekly roundup of the latest news stories from around the gymternet include:
- Louis Smith’s dog exercise video
- A listener hypothesizes about senior elite injury issues at Cincinnati Gymnastics
- How coach Martin O’Hara was to abuse gymnasts for 20 years before being caught and what the gymnastics community can do to stop this from happening again.
What: It’s the Olympic year, time for another amazing GymCastic giveaway. Frequent guest host, Lauren Hopkins of the Gymter.net has released the first in her young adult fiction series, Finding Our Balance. One lucky listener will have their very own unique skill or routine written into book two of the 2016 trilogy.
How: Tag us in you routine (5 skills) or skill invention with #2016trilogy on our Facebook page or Twitter. For example, “1.5 twisting Shapahnikova catch in reverse grip to immediate Geiger @GymCastic #2016Trilogy”
Prize: A copy of Lauren’s book, Finding Our Balance.
Deadline: Enter by midnight on Sunday, Jan 24th
- Elites in the NCAA data
- Take me! The Listener Survey
- Safe4Athletes
- Join Club Gym Nerd here for super affordable $2/month.
- Buy one of our awesome shirts here.
- 146: Taylor Rice and The 2015 NCAA Championships
- 145: Rheagan Courville
- 144: Counter Kim at Game of Regions 2015
- 180: Flamethrowers, the must-have accessory for 2016
- 179: Aliya’s Ink
- 178: Eythora Thorsdottir and Coach Patrick Kiens
- 177: Stella Umeh
- 176: Worlds Wrap-Up Show
- 163: ENOUGH
- Episode 56: Preventing Abuse in Gymnastics
- Episode 28: Kristen Maloney
- 65: NCAA Judge Dean Ratliff, Early Recruiting & Saving Temple Men’s Gymnastics
- 69: 2009 World Champion Kayla Williams & Alabama’s Sarah Patterson
- 74: Melanie Sinclair & A Review of Cirque’s Amaluna
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I think you all know me as a somewhat obsessed OU gym fan. Guess what my other alma mater is? GW!! Yes, it is true. I could not be more excited for their rise this season. The university made a commitment a few years ago to improve ALL sports not just basketball and I love that it is coming through. I am crazy excited to get to see GW, OU, and Denver all at once at the Perfect 10 meet in February. Alma matter or not, it is great to see programs rise and increase the competition and excitement about NCAA gym!
YES I\’m SO glad that someone else noticed that Amanda Borden said that Angi Cipra\’s vault had some \”twerk.\” I watched that four times and just laughed and laughed by myself in my living room and then tried to decide how the NCAA code would value the twerkchenko full.
I completely agree with Uncle Tim re: NCAA vs. Elite and rolled my eyes so hard at Jessica and Spencer\’s response. To be honest, I pretty much stop listening to Gymcastic during NCAA season (and I love NCAA gymnastics) just because the constant snarking about elite and the extremely predictable opinions and commentary about certain teams gets old and tiresome really fast. I\’ll be back in April.
Per Jessica\’s demands I watched an entire college meet as well as watching the highlights of the week. While I will probably always prefer the jaw dropping nature of elite, I do think the best college routines are a lovely palette cleanser. I also have to give major kudos to the college athletes for traveling every week to compete and still going to school full time.
I still have a lot of concerns about college gymnastics. Mainly it is that I feel the athletes are being pushed to fill the mold of the pretty, bubbly, energetic, and overtly sexual college girl at every moment. There is no way that that is all of their personalities. For example, it seems to be required that you flash a huge grin at least twice per routine, wear glitter everywhere, and then excitedly give the whole team high fives afterwards regardless of how the routine went. While the highlights I found had some awesome floor routines, the teams that I watched seemed to have a primary style that was burlesque for EVERY girl. Add in the leotards that don\’t fit and I was turned off. These are amazing athletes and women. They don\’t need to have sexy floor routines unless they want them. They don\’t need to be outgoing, happy, and energetic unless that is really how they feel Currently I don\’t plan on watching any more college meets because I don\’t want my kids to grow up seeing those girls who all seem to fit one mold and thinking they HAVE to be like that all the time.
I think elite gymnastics is more appealing because it is easy to follow a few gymnasts and know TONS about the whole picture/sport. In NCAA there are so many athletes and teams it’s hard to follow and have a favorite and keep track of them and see all of their routines. I like NCAA now but it took me a while to become attached to a team and understand I can’t personally follow all the teams and routines and know what happened like I can when I follow USA elites at competitions.