Everyone marvels at gymnasts’ abilities to bend, twist and flip as if it is nothing out of the ordinary. And they do these things on a beam four inches wide and on relatively flat surfaces. Women’s gymnastics in particular becomes the sport to watch during the summer Olympics. The gymnasts seem to be younger and more talented every time. During the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the gymnasts really were younger. Rumors and allegations flowed throughout the Games regarding the Chinese women’s team’s 13- and 14-year-old gymnasts.
Drama and scandal aside, women’s collegiate gymnastics is not hard to understand, with a little background.
Meets consist of four events: vault; balance beam, or beam; uneven parallel bars, or bars; and floor exercises, or floor. The all-around competition could be considered the fifth event. Usually gymnasts have one or two specialties, competing in those events, but with the all-around, a few select gymnasts compete in every event and a score is compiled from their individual event scores.
Scoring in collegiate gymnastics is out of 10, so a flawless routine would earn a gymnast a perfect score of 10 points. A gymmast’s routine for each event has a start value. This number is an indication of how difficult the routine is. The higher the start value, the more difficult the routine is. From this start value, points are both added and deducted based on the gymnast’s performance. There are certain components all gymnasts must include in their routines. Not including these components or executing them poorly leads to a deduction in points. If gymnasts execute a series of skills in a row, more points are given. When there are two judges, each gives a score and the gymnasts’ final scores for any particular event are the average of the two. A team’s total score is made up of the combined scores from each gymnast’s performance on the events.
The order each team competes in is known as a rotation. They start on different events and make their way through each event until everyone has competed in their particular events. This order changes every meet and varies more when three or more teams are competing. With two teams competing, meets last around two hours, but things move quickly.
Teams that score consistently high throughout the season increase their Regional Qualifying Score, also known as the RQS. A team’s six best regular season scores and an all-around competitor’s six best scores, three of which need to be from away meets, make up the RQS. This score is a major part in qualifying for the National Collegiate Women’s Gymnastics Championship regionals, known simply as regionals. There are six regions and each one has six qualifying teams. The higher a team’s RQS, the higher seed it gets at regionals, making the journey to the NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championship a little bit easier. The top two teams from each regional get an automatic berth to nationals.
Make sure to take advantage of this newfound knowledge and head over to the Smith Fieldhouse to see BYU’s women’s gymnastics team compete next against Southern Utah, a team the Cougars already defeated earlier this season, and Utah State on Feb. 25.
