As we enter the 2025 season, we’re getting ready for the final cohort of COVID-year athletes. The NCAA allowed an extra year of eligibility for all 2021 winter athletes to account for teams and individuals who opted out of the 2021 season. Gymnasts have already been able to take a COVID year in the 2022, 2023, and 2024 seasons, resulting in thousands of routines from athletes who chose to extend their collegiate careers.
While athletes can stay on longer, the number of routines in each meet hasn’t changed. We found that over the last three seasons, fifth-year gymnasts have made nearly 5,000 lineup appearances. Has this resulted in underclassmen making fewer appearances?
Who did we consider to be a fifth year?
We used the cohort of fifth-year athletes that we previously identified in our previous Data Deep Dive, “Unpacking the Success of Fifth-Year Gymnasts”: including gymnasts in their second or third senior seasons in Road to Nationals rosters as well as gymnasts included in College Gym News’s 2022, 2023, and 2024 tracking articles as returning for a fifth year. For non-fifth years, we used class years in Road to Nationals rosters.
Throughout this analysis, we look at the percentage of lineup appearances by class year to account for changing number…
