College gymnastics has a reputation for being the place where athletes’ skills go to, not to die exactly, but to be simplified and polished. Difficulty becomes less valuable and execution is at a premium.
But for some gymnasts, simplifying and polishing isn’t enough. Whether because of their own goals as an athlete or their team’s goals for the season, there are gymnats who will develop new skills in college, or add to existing ones.
A prime example is the Yurchenko one and a half. It’s been 16 years since Nastia Liukin won the Olympic all-around title with a Yurchenko one and a half. One year after that, in 2009, the Yurchenko one and a half was devalued in the elite code, and more gymnasts returned to the simpler Yurchenko full as an alternative because the risk stopped being worth it. Case in point: only eight gymnasts competed the Yurchenko one and half at the Tokyo Games.
But in the post-Nastia era, it has become a popular vault in college. In the NCAA code, the Yurchenko full was devalued in 2015 to a 9.95 start value, while the Yurchenko one and a half retained its 10.0. In 2016, the first competition season after the code change, the one and a halfs performed at nationals received, on average, .06 more than the fulls, amounting to more than the…
