As a five-star recruit, prospective student-athletes often have their pick of scholarship offers from multiple top teams. Some gymnasts choose to go to a school with a reputation for winning conference and national championships while others might choose a less successful program overall, knowing they can be a star athlete on that team. But does competing on a higher-ranked squad make these gymnasts more successful?
To answer this question, I compared the three-event score of two sets of similarly ranked five-star recruits. I looked at both the NCAA panel’s score and also re-evaluated the routines to see if the judges are more generous to gymnasts on higher-ranked teams. I used the final rankings of the 2024 season and the first performance (with video review available) on each event to try to control for improvements due to the coaching staff. I watched the routines at full speed with no replays and took deductions using college judging norms.
As a reminder, camera angles are often different from the judge’s perspective. This can cause discrepancies between my scores and the panel’s, since they often see deductions I can’t and vice versa. Below is a side-by-side comparison of each set of recruits, with links to the routines I re-scored and the deductions I…
