Coming off a stellar performance last week, DU gymnastics has a lot to be proud of. But what does it take to get to 198 points?
Millions of girls do gymnastics across the country. The ones who are good enough to make it to developmental programs face a lot of work at their sport. High level gymnasts practice six days a week, often 4 or more hours per day, from the time they’re ten or twelve years old. There is no off season; they practice year-round.
Future NCAA athletes compete to prove themselves all through high school. They give up a social life and many typical high school experiences because their sport demands that they not take days off.
Young gymnasts compete in roughly ten meets per year. That is only ten chances to show everything they’ve worked for. Each meet amounts to less than five minutes of actual competition. Try working for hundreds of hours to meet a goal and getting just five minutes to prove yourself. Now do that and try not to have a mental breakdown. They must compete with confidence, overcome fear, and do incredible things perfectly.
A future collegiate gymnast works her entire childhood to make it. But the odds of ever making a team are low. There are only 81 collegiate women’s gymnastics teams. Each team has at most has 20 athletes. That is a maximum of 1620 collegiate gymnasts, and roughly a quarter of those spots open per year. So figure 400 available team spots for every incoming class of gymnasts. That’s less aspiring gymnasts than the number of them who attend each DU home meet. As a comparison, there are 627 women’s college swim teams. There are millions of little girls who dream of someday competing at the college level. And we’re not even talking about the astronomical odds of making an Olympic team; this is college. Oh, and in addition to being on top of their sport, most college gymnasts are 4.0 GPA students in high school.
Eventually, the hardest working, most talented, and determined gymnasts get a spot on a team. Then those girls leave home and go to college. As they adjust to a new life, new coaches, new teammates, and new expectations, they have to keep doing top level gymnastics, and keep up their grades. Once they make a team, they have to make a lineup to even compete at the college level. To make a lineup, not only do they have to have the skills, they have to perform all those skills without error. Only when they can prove consistency will they make a lineup. And they have to try not to get hurt and keep up all their skills for four years of college.
College gymnastics is a team sport. But it is a team that relies on every individual to perform perfectly every time they are on the apparatus. Yes, NCAA rules allow the team to drop a low score on each event, but when one athlete has a miss, the pressure mounts for the rest of the team, so the pressure is high for every single routine.
A vault takes about five seconds, including the run. A routine on bars is roughly thirty seconds. Beam and floor are both limited to 90 seconds or less. Consider this like four shifts a hockey player plays in a game. Every player must have a perfect shift, every shift. On top of that, each shift the player must play a different position that takes different skills to excel at. And every shift counts; no second chances. And there are only ten games per year. But in reality, a hockey player can have a bad shift and still win a game. Hockey players get more than four shifts in a game, and their teammates can cover their blunders. And hockey teams play up to fifty games in a season, so many more chances of success. But gymnastics is not like hockey.
Gymnasts must face the pressure of getting just one shot at each event. In college, they compete once per week during season and face that pressure week after week. College rankings are based on average team scores, so they must perform and must score every time. Collegiate gymnasts continue the training regimen they followed growing up, but now with the self-discipline of being on their own and training for consistency.
Gymnasts must have all of their college level skills before they graduate high school. In college they only learn consistency. The only way to be successful is to do it exactly the same every single time. Don’t fall, don’t bobble, don’t take a step. Be perfect. Over and over.
In a nutshell, be perfect. Do it every week. Don’t crack. Don’t get hurt. To get to the NCAA #9 ranking, you’ve got to learn collegiate level skills by age 16. Spend two or more years in level 10 or elite gymnastics, getting closer and closer to perfection. Then go to college and be within 0.2 points of perfect on every single performance at every single meet. To stay in the top 10 you can’t fall, can’t bobble, can’t take a step without some blogger saying you’re never making it to Nationals.
So, what does it take to get to 198? It’s to dedicate your life to an unforgiving sport and love it enough to keep coming back for more. It’s to do all that and rely on every team member to do it as well. It’s to come into Magness one magical afternoon where there is something in the air and everyone’s hard work pays off at once and the crowd goes wild. It’s tears of joy and hugs for teammates and coaches, and it’s thanks to your family for supporting you in this wild journey your whole life. And then it’s get back out there a week later and hope to find magic again.
On behalf of Let’s Go DU, I want to congratulate the 2024 DU gymnastics team for catching lightning in a bottle. And here’s hoping for more 198s on the road to Nationals! Let’s Go DU!
Photo by Tim Cattrysse
Nice story.
Also harder to maintain body weight in college than it is in HS, due to hormones, keeping odd college hours, college pressures and eating on one’s own…
Can we please not bring up body weight in talking about gymnastics? That is irrelevant to the discussion. Gymnastics is hard. Period.
While I am all for protecting athletes from general ‘fat-shaming’, but I don’t think weight is irrelevant to the discussion when it comes to the hardness of D-I gymnastics for athletes. There is a reason the Chinese team’s Gold Medal pre-pubescent bodies were banned by the IOC in the 1990s when the age limit for the Olympics was raised from 14 to 15 to 16. I’ve also heard a number of comments from senior level sports administrators at different schools that athletes who can maintain a lower body weight after 18 are often more coveted on the recruiting trail, and those who compete with fuller women’s adult bodies may risk losing out on scholarships to top programs. That’s the reality of a judged sport where weight plays a major role in flight trajectories, skill acquisition/retention, aesthetics, etc. In short, it’s relevant…
I don’t understand the point and how it correlates to the article.
The point Swami was making is that weight issues also make college gymnastics hard, a topic which Jill, the author, didn’t think was relevant, likely to avoid discussion of the topic. I can see both points. Jill wants to protect further scrutiny of female athletes on a sensitive topic, while Swami believes that weight is a critical athletic issue that affects many dimensions of gymnastics recruiting and performance as well as self esteem…
John Polli
Excellent writing. Excellent! If there is any competitive writing venue for sports articles this one should be entered.
Thanks for the insight…
Unbelievable dedication and sacrifice in a sport where, unlike hockey, the only future financial reward might be a one in several billion olympic win.
You have a made Dunker a huge gymnastics fan. You should cover gymnastics for The Athletic. They would definitely publish your above writing. A friend asked me a
Reasonable question today. Has any team ever hit 9.90 or above for a meet? I’m guessing no since it would require many perfect 10.00’s most likely.
Yes, the 9.9 average comes out to a team total of 198. DU did that on 2/4 (and once last March). There are six teams who have hit 198 or higher this year: Oklahoma, LSU, UCLA, Michigan State, Ball State, and Denver. Oklahoma (#1) has hit 198 in three of their six meets already this year. In fact, their team average is 198.113. That’s an average of 9.905 for every counted routine across all six meets. That shows you what it takes to be #1. DU is at 9.865 average. The difference between #1 and #7 is 0.04 average for each routine.
The “Yes…” comment was from Jill. 🙂
Puck: My response was not about fat shaming. It is about the fact that weight is a byproduct of gymnastics training, healthy eating, and year-round strenuous exercise. If an athlete wants to do well in collegiate gymnastics, they must commit to appropriate fueling of their mind and body. They must commit to everything I mentioned in my article. I am trying to dispel harmful mindsets and stereotypes that have done a lot of damage to the sport of gymnastics. There are countless stories of gymnasts being mentally and physically abused by coaches for weight and appearances. It makes me wonder how much better those athletes could have been without those pressures that led to disordered eating. Perhaps we would have seen the level of progress Simone Biles made in the sport a decade earlier without those harmful practices. Look at today’s top US gymnasts who have come up with much less pressure to meet a specific look. Look at the ages of the world’s best elite gymnasts today. Look at the new skills we’re seeing from Simone Biles and Suni Lee. Look at the NCAA field of top athletes with many different body types. These women are showing progress in the direction of elevating gymnastics and valuing strength over a specific look. The sport has changed and our language talking about the sport needs to change too. The references you made are dated and have been proven wrong. By no means are we there yet as far as judging athletes fairly, but we have made strides. The sport has improved because of these hard fought changes. I am not trying to get anyone to go woke, I’m talking the actual progress that has been made in the sport of gymnastics. Comments about how hard it is to maintain weight in college are tone deaf and antiquated. What is hard is the training and taking care of athletes’ overall health and strength.
Preach, Jill! Great article and great response to Puck.
What a great article and follow up comment by Jill about the difficulties of being an elite athlete in college gymnastics. It’s a great sport with great athletes.