There are a lot of unknowns in this session. Oregon State’s Jade Carey, certainly the best single gymnast in this quad and one of the best in the country, is likely to be limited in her participation this year as she winds up for the Olympic cycle. We don’t know how much of that will be event limits, i.e. competing just bars and beam, and how much might be outright rest weeks. All four of these teams have monster freshman classes, but SUU in particular has about a million freshmen and even more lineup spots to fill: This is going to be a very different-looking group of Thunderbirds. BYU and Minnesota are both teams in transition, working on rebuilding from the loss of program-defining alumni of years past, and have lots of underclassman routines to explore and incorporate as time goes on.
Rotation 1: Oregon State VT, Minnesota UB, SUU BB, BYU FX
Briones (OSU): FTY, clean in the air, didn’t anticipate the ground and comes in substantially short with a big bounce forward.
McClain (SUU): Kickover front BHS a little slow but good enough. Short of positions on her leaps, piked kickover front that didn’t look substantially different from the tucked one, check on the full turn, gainer full off the side with a hop in place.
Kirkham (BYU): Front lay to Rudi,…
