While gymnastics does not conform to an offense-defense structure like basketball or football, opportunities do remain for strategic decision-making. One area of particular interest for college teams is lineup construction–selecting the right six gymnasts and sorting them in the right order to best optimize the event total on the day.
As with strategic questions in other sports, there are different schools of thought regarding lineup decisions. For instance, teams may arrange their gymnasts in terms of ascending scoring potential to save their best gymnasts for last or adopt the so-called ‘Bridgeying’ technique (explained in this article). In either case, teams work off the widely-held belief that scores build over the course of a rotation.
But do scores truly rise across lineups? How exactly have teams approached lineup decisions? And finally, what relationship, if any, does a team’s lineup decision have with scores? In this Data Deep Dive, we look at data from the 2023 and 2024 seasons in search of answers.
Data Overview
As no source for consolidated lineup information was readily available, we collected the data manually from official score sheets, supplementing it with information from additional sources such as live score pages and meet videos…
