In this article, I take a deep dive into the world of Division III gymnastics. Division III programs do not provide athletic scholarships, making recruiting the highest performing athletes more difficult. These programs take pride in developing gymnasts that may not have been the highest performing athletes in high school but have grown into strong athletes and performers in their own right in college.
The fact that top teams enjoy significant recruiting advantages, as well as large program budgets, makes it hard for lower-resource schools to keep up. Brockport has the highest NQS ranking of any Division III program at 66 of 84 teams.
For this article, I wanted to know if there was also bias from the judges in evaluating Division III routines. Perhaps because they are not scholarship athletes, judges expect a lower quality of gymnastics or feel more confident taking smaller deductions that may not be taken in Division I competitions. Tavia Smith and Allison Freeman, two of our editors at College Gym News, picked 11 routines for me to evaluate. I scored the routines in real time on the first viewing to try and make it as close to the experience of the judges, with some concessions made for difference in viewing angle. I then compared them to the judging panels’…
