Men’s NCAA Gymnastics meet Snapshot Week 11 2025
Men’s NCAA gymnastics judging as imagined by Dall-E 3.
Michigan and Nebraska bring in the # 1 and #2 team scores so far this season - by a lot. Both teams score 335+. The next highest total score is 330.7 by Oklahoma. Fred Richard achieved by far the highest AA score this season, with 85.2. Michigan’s win gave them a share of the B1G regular season title. It was an exciting meet from start to finish.
I watched it and the very first thing that happened was a gymnast scoring 14.6 on FX, which is a giant score. The D score flashed was 5.9, which is far higher than the 5 this person normally competes. For reference, only 3 people in the world have competed a higher D score under the new code - Kameron Nelson (6.2), Harry Hepworth (6.1), and Jake Jarman (6.1). A 5.9 would be the fourth-highest FX D score in the world. Probably someone should have done a double-take after coming up with that number. Was a pre-comp form available?
What many people saw - video isn’t up yet on RTN.
Front double pike - E
Double layout - E
Scale - A (doesn’t count towards 8 elements)
Back 3/2 + F 1/1 - C + C
Fedorchenko - C
Back 5/2 + Lay - D + B + 0.1
Back double pike - D
total 3.0 + 2.0 EGR = 5.0
Mistakes are going to happen. However, the first question in my mind is - what else is going wrong? As a fan, I rely on the numbers to tell me the story of what happened in these meets, and I prefer those to be non-fiction.
Perhaps coaches of opposing teams should be allowed to protest scores. The FIG doesn’t allow this, but the FIG isn’t always a font of reason. People may be afraid of chaos and petty challenges. Maybe limit the number of inquiries and apply a neutral deduction for rejected inquiries from the opposing team. If mistakes happen and people see them, what is the reason they should not be corrected?
I understand fans and athletic directors want wins, but no win is worth damaging the integrity of the sport. Put the good of the whole beyond your own needs. Altruism and self sacrifice for the good of the community will earn as much or more peer respect than winning does.
This is ultimately on the judges, not the athletes or the coaches. This isn’t the first time this season the wrong start value has been assigned. Some of it is to be expected with a code that changed so much. Hopefully, next year will be better! Maybe there should be more practice judging in between meets.
Sad I ended up writing about this instead of the great gymnastics that happened at the meet, but that’s how these things go. Remember how Paul Hamm’s wonderful gold medal performance was overshadowed by the scoring controversy that came later? This isn’t something anyone wants to see repeated at a conference or national championship. For a sport on the brink of extinction, that might not end well.
Michigan @ Nebraska
Calculated from the official results. Home team is in red. Stick bonus is included in the D score. Let me know if there are any mistakes.