Women’s collegiate gymnastics coaches took the first step towards a radical overhaul of their sport at their annual college coaches’ meetings, held in conjunction with the J.O. National Championships in Washington earlier this month.

After more than three days of heated discussion, the women’s National Association of Collegiate Gymnastics Coaches voted to vastly change the NCAA competition format.

First, by adopting a six-up, six-count scoring format for all collegiate competitions and second by reducing the NCAA finals, currently known as the Super Six, to four teams and, if warranted, moving the meet from Friday night to Saturday afternoon in the hopes of gaining live TV coverage from rights-holder CBS. (Twelve teams would still qualify to NCAAs, but only the top two from each prelim session would advance to finals and compete for the title. Regional qualifying would remain the same.)

The latter measure, which reduces the number of teams in finals by two, passed almost unanimously (only one coach, in the end, voted against the radical reduction), while the six-up, six-count scoring idea received only a simple majority.

Both changes are the brainchild of Utah coach Greg Marsden, winner of nine NCAA titles and a passionate advocate for making his sport more accessible to the public. Because of that enthusiasm many were shocked when, in a calculated move, Marsden did not personally attend the coaches’ meeting. (Utah was represented in the vote.) Instead, Marsden confined himself to an intensive online campaign for his ideas.

“I felt like I had kind of said everything I had to say,” Marsden explains of his absence, which some questioned. “I’m a very passionate person. What I’m saying is: I tend to take over. I felt it was important that other people had an opportunity to speak to the pros and cons of this.

“I went for 33 years and now I do feel like it’s time for some of the people who have a vested interested in the future to take a more active role,” Marsden adds. “Not that I’m not going to be around, but I’ve got less years ahead of me than I have behind me.”

Though the coaches’ vote is complete, it’s not binding. Only the seven-person NCAA committee governing gymnastics can pass measures that change the way the sport is contested at its Championships.

“The coaches association can only make recommendations to the committee,” Marsden explains. “They are really free to do whatever they feel is in the best interest of the Championships. Sometimes they take our recommendations, and sometimes they don’t. It’s never a done deal until we hear from them.”

In fact, the women’s NCAA gymnastics committee—whose deliberations are explicitly not public—have previously squashed similar proposals, including these same two measures at various times in the past. (Both counting all scores and reducing the finals to four teams were, separately, proposed and rejected in the 1990s.)

Just last year, the coaches put forth a far less radical proposal—to count all meets towards a team’s regional qualifying score (RQS)—that was vetoed by the committee.

“It’s a thing where, your guess is as a good as mine,” Marsden tells Inside of the chance his changes will be ratified. “Honestly, though we voted for both, I know some of the coaches who are involved with the committee weren’t necessarily in favor.”

“It will be interesting to see what they do,” Oklahoma coach K.J. Kindler muses. “If they look at the vote, and the lengthy debate that preceded that and say, ‘They really thought this through, and this is what they want,’ or if they just [dismiss] it and say, ‘Too controversial.’”

The committee, which is made up of a rotating slate of collegiate coaches (four) and administrators (three), can, essentially, do whatever they want. They could rubber stamp the coaches’ vote and implement the changes, approve one measure, and not the other, discard both, or even alter the ideas to fit their own agenda. What’s more, the committee not only dictates if the changes are made but, should they approve them, when they would go into effect.

“People are talking like this is going to happen next year,” Florida coach Rhonda Faehn says, “but I’d very surprised—shocked, really—if that was the case. The bids for at least [the next two NCAAs] are already set and those bids were made using the Super Six finals format. My understanding is that, that’s set.”

Faehn, whose Florida team finished fourth at this year’s Championships and will host NCAAs next season, was outspoken in her reluctance to reduce the number of teams in finals and was, by her own admission, the lone voting holdout against the proposal.

“I don’t believe in taking away any opportunity, for any student-athlete, particularly women, at any time, and this would be diminishing opportunity,” Faehn told Inside. “There’s no way around that. But, at the same time, I completely and fully support bringing greater attention and making it easier for the public to enjoy our sport—and everything that goes along with that.”

Fahen is talking about hoped-for live TV coverage, which is what propelled the proposal in the first place.

By eliminating the lengthy, and often confusing, two bye rotations required by a six-team final (scores between teams are unequal, making the meet hard to follow, not to mention slow), as well as moving team finals—now the “Fantastic Four?”—to Saturday afternoon, coaches hope to elicit a commitment from CBS to show NCAAs as they happen.

“A lot of people were convinced to vote for this measure based on the premise that it would lead to live TV coverage,” explains Kindler, who supported the measure despite the fact her Sooner team has never been to NCAA finals. “It wasn’t promised, but it was strongly implied and, if we go ahead and do this—reduce our finals to four—and don’t get live TV coverage, I think a lot of people are going to be very upset.”

“It was unwise to place your vote solely on that, because that’s something we have no control over,” Marsden counters. “TV has implied to us that they would never consider televising our meet live until we got the package down to, at most, two hours, and that we would have to be willing to move our meet time to work for them, which would likely mean 2 PM Eastern Time on Saturday afternoon.”

But even if all those changes are made, there is no guarantee live coverage, something coaches crave, will follow.

“I think that’s important to a vast majority of us,” Marsden says of seeing the meet air as it happens. “It’s killing us that we’re not live. I think the impression to people is that if you’re not live, it’s not real. I think we would have much greater viewership live.”

“I think that all of us were willing to sacrifice those two opportunities for the ability to have live TV,” says Kindler succinctly. “That is the only reason. We know that TV is where it's at. It makes the sport more exciting and relevant. Nobody wants to give up their opportunity but, in the end, we are willing to have our goals be pushed for the good of the sport as a whole.”

“I understand,” Faehn says of the desire to simplify the finals. “We don’t enjoy competing with byes. It’s better to not have to wait. But, at the same time, I would argue that our SEC Championships is the most exciting competition of the entire year, sometimes even more so than NCAAs. And it has a higher attendance, usually. And, with seven teams, we have three byes. It’s long and it’s not on live TV, granted, but it’s still a great competition. The Super Six—I’m just partial to that because that was something the gymnastics community came up with. We branded it. The final four has been done.

“I have that fear, as does everyone else: What if we do this and it takes away opportunity and doesn’t bring about the changes we’re hoping for?” Faehn adds forlornly. “What happens if we’re worse off?”

As it is, only four women’s teams—Alabama, Georgia, UCLA and Utah—have ever won the NCAA team title and only 18, just 20 percent of all programs, have ever advanced to finals.

“This year, we saw Arkansas in Super Six and it was a monumental stepping stone for their program. It was huge for their school. Huge. Especially as a new program, showing it is possible,” says Faehn. “With four, it’s just that much more daunting—and it’s already such a hard thing to do. I just don’t know how it will play out.

“Greg Marsden–whom I absolutely adore—has been trying to put through this proposal for maybe the last 10 years,” she adds. “I think this year it generated more interest and notoriety simply because of economic times. MIT eliminated their program, Cal State Fullerton [is in jeopardy]. Times are tough, and scary, and it made people more willing to do something; to try and make a change.

“But live TV is not going to save programs,” Faehn concludes. “That’s not the problem. The problem is that it’s a very expensive sport. Obviously, we want to generate excitement and interest, but live TV is not the answer to saving programs.”

Though the NCAA committee doesn’t have to consider the proposals as a pair, most coaches see them going hand-in-hand. Without the upset potential brought on by counting all scores, a four-team final could result in solidifying the already moribund women’s NCAA elite, eliminating any chance of another team breaking through.

“Honestly, I’m really excited about the possibilities,” Kindler says of the potential for all scores to count, every time you compete. “It allows you to use strategy, to be defensive in what you do. I think it adds a whole other dimension to how you coach women's gymnastics in college. You’re going to be responsible to have six quality people on the floor, every event, every meet. I think there could be a lot of exciting things that come out of it.”

Thrilling or terrifying, depending on how you look at it. “That one scares me a lot,” Faehn says of the proposal. “Simply because we wouldn’t even have been at Nationals this year under this rule. We only had five bodies at SECs on bars. We really did not have a sixth body to go up and even score an 8.2. That scares me because, injury-wise, this past year was an exception, but things that dire do happen.

“What if you’re No. 1 all year long and your first girl up on floor tears her Achilles on her first pass?” Faehn queries. “You’re done. Some say that’s sport, but for me that’s hard to swallow. I don’t know if that was well thought out.

“But, at the same time, I can see the other side,” Faehn adds. “You gotta be consistent. What I fear is everyone is going to water down. There will be no more risk. No more double backs off beam. No double layouts. No Yurchenko 1-1/2s. Why take the chance that, just one time, someone is going to land on her backside? I don’t want to see that happen, but I’m sure it will. Sadly.”

Not surprisingly, Marsden disagrees. “I know that’s one concern people have expressed,” he says of a potential decrease in skill level. “But I really don’t think so because, ultimately, it’s about being competitive. Even right now people are doing much more than required, because that’s what it takes to compete at the highest level. That was one of the arguments we went through when we decided to go to one vault, and none of those [fears] came true.

“You can’t be absolutely conservative and win,” Marsden adds emphatically. “At some point you have to take a risk and you have to try and do the best gymnastics you can. What this does do is encourage people not to do what they’re not capable of doing. I think it’s a positive because it addresses a not-so-good aspect of gymnastics, which is our injury rate.”

Not that Marsden is completely supportive. He would have preferred to see the format shifted to five-up, five count—an idea that was also widely discussed, then discarded, in part because coaches feared it gave schools an excuse to cut scholarships. (Currently, women have a maximum of 12 per program.)

“We’re at the mercy of the committee,” Marsden says of where both measures currently stand. “The committee can do whatever they want to now. I think to accomplish what we want they need to do both. I personally hope they look at five scores versus six scores, and go with five scores to count. I don’t think they will, but I’d like to see it.”

Kindler agrees that she’d like to see both measures go into effect—or none. “The reason I say [that] is because six-for-six allows for so much more to happen,” the Oklahoma coach explains. “Those teams at the top are all are very close. It would have ended up with a different result this year if you’d counted all scores.

“If you just reduce the number of teams, it won’t open the door for unusual occurrences,” Kindler concludes. “The rich will keep getting richer. If everyone gets a mulligan, those same teams are going to keep on being the same.”

The NCAA committee will meet in June and Marsden said he expects to know if the measures will be enacted, “sometime in July.”

“I don’t know if this is the answer,” admits Marsden. “But obviously what we’re doing is not increasing interest in Championships, and it’s certainly not saving programs. I do know we need to do something, and I’m encouraged that others are finally seeing that.”

Even Faehn, perhaps the proposals’ most vocal critic, is receptive to the possibilities. “I have an open mind,” she insists. “I am supportive of whatever our whole association does. Our job and our goal remains the same.

“I don’t have a crystal ball,” she concludes. “Ten years from now we could be the biggest thing on TV, with huge ratings and a dozen new programs and we’ll all be saying, ‘Why didn’t we do this sooner?’”

 

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