The strategies that play into building a strong and balanced lineup vary widely from school to school. While this ushers in some excitement, it often leaves gym fans wondering what factors play into a coach’s decision to rest or not rest, compete or not compete, a certain gymnast. More so, does playing around with lineups and using depth affect how a team performs? Is consistency the best strategy to win, or does resting gymnasts and trying out new routines benefit performance? To examine this, our data team took a look at lineup consistency through a statistical lens to determine if consistency in lineups makes a significant impact on a team’s success.
Methodology
Inspired by FiveThirtyEight’s consistency calculations for Premier League teams, we first pulled individual results for all of 2023 from Road to Nationals. Then, for each gymnast, we found how many events they competed each week and how that changed from the previous week. For example, if a gymnast competed in the all-around one week, but then only competed on vault and floor the next, that is a total change of two events. The individual changes were then summed for all gymnasts on a team to find the total lineup changes per team over the entire season.
Next, we calculated how many meets each…
