THe Canadian Championships started on Thursday, 5/18/15 with the preliminary session of the Women's Senior High Performance (Elite) competition. The athletes are vying for a spot on the Pan Am team.
Rose-Kaying Woo, a junior competing with the seniors, placed 1st AA in the prelims. In 2nd was senior Isabela Onyshko and in third was veteran Ellie Black. Florida commit Maegan Chant is 4th, and Washington commit Madison Copiak is 6th. Ohio State signee Victoria-Kayen Woo is 7th, while UGA commit Jordyn Pederson is 10th.
UGA star Brittany Rogers competed only three events, and is 17th.
In the National Open division, Ivy Lu posted the top mark. Iowa commit Clair Kaji was 4th, with BYU commit Angel Zhong in 17th.
Link: Results
Aki Hummel, a former Assistant Coach at Utah, has teamed up with the Utah staff as a volunteer coach. In his prior stint at Utah, he was primarily the bars coach and he will focus on bars in this position
The PAC-12 Sportsmanship Award is based on good sportsmanship and ethical behavior in participation of intercollegiate athletics. UCLA's team has been honored for their behavior and actions following Tory Wilson's devastating injury during the PAC-12 Championships.
Read about it here
Robert Ladanyi, former Assistant Coach at Florida, has been named Assistant Coach at Denver.
Sr. A Top 30 of 56
Senior B Top 30 of 57
Senior C Top 30 of 59
Senior D Top 30
Elizabeth McDuffie, L10 at United Gymnastix in Maryland will compete for Temple Gymnastics. This season she was 13th AA at the 2015 Region VII L10 Regionals.
Link: Videos
Long time assistant Randy Solorio has been named interim Head Coach at Sacramento State for the 2015-2016. He has been at Sac State for 30 years. Former CSUS Head Coach Kim Hughes retired at the end of the season.
Link: http://www.hornetsports.com/sports/wgym/2014-15/releases/20150511uderoa
PAC-12 coaches are pushing for changes to regionals and nationals to gain TV exposure: Article
Jenny Rowland makes the jump from Auburn and takes her impressive coaching background to Florida.
The first day of the Men's JO Nationals was finished on May 7th, and Region III won the team title.
In the junior elite division, athletes competed one day of optionals under the JO rules. Saturday, they'll do technical sequences. Here's the top scores by age group:
After the first of two days of optional Level 10 Junior Olympic division competition, the leaders are as followsLO
Link: USAG Results and Videos
Tabitha Yim has been named the new head coach at Arizona. She has coached at Stanford for five seasons.
In an article and video piece, ESPN features Greg and Megan Marsden talking about how they successfully marketed Utah's program. The article also touches on the future of NCAA gymnastics and the impact of the rising costs-per-athlete. (See the video and article here)
"When I look at the big picture, I'm really concerned about the future of college athletics as we know it," Marsden says, citing a recent vote by the power five conferences, including the Pac-12 and SEC, to allow schools to offer full cost-of-attendance scholarships that cover food, transportation and miscellaneous expenses. "That will add another million or more to most athletic budgets," Marsden says. "The next thing coming down the line will be long-term healthcare and the final blow will be when we start paying football and basketball players in some form. It's inevitable, and when it happens, there won't be enough money to go around. Tough decisions will have to be made and I'm concerned about Olympic sports. It's important for gymnastics to position itself right now. If our meets and championships aren't live on TV with good ratings, we might not survive."
The Marsdens have long advocated for changes to meet formats that will encourage more live TV coverage and increase revenues.
This season, both the SEC and Pac-12 networks aired regular-season women's gymnastics meets live to great success. "But our championships are not on live TV," Megan says. "Our tape-delay broadcast of championships on ESPNU was interrupted with a live softball game between two unranked teams. That tells me we have not come far enough. It is our problem to fix. That Greg wasn't able to do so during his career is his biggest regret."
Perhaps some coaches who initially disagreed with proposed format changes have had a change of heart.
"When Greg's proposal first came through years back, I was one of the only coaches against it," says Faehn, who recently announced her departure from Florida to accept the role of Senior VP of the women's program at USA Gymnastics. "But I have done a 180. We need to be live. A few years ago, I didn't follow women's softball. Last year, NCAAs was on live and I was engrossed. When our championships came on, I thought, 'Why do I want to watch this? I know the results.' A light bulb went off. We need to make our product more TV friendly."
Kytra Hunter has won the Honda Sports Award. That positions her as a finalist for the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year and the 2015 Honda Cup.
Temple has announced the hiring of Umme Salim-Beasley as their new Head Coach. She comes to the Owls after four years as an assistant at Rutgers. She was a former standout at WVU and trained at Hill's.
Link: Temple Release