OU is Once Again the Coaches' Favorite to Win the Title

Last season, OU regained the National Title by defeating UCLA, Missouri and Utah in the Four on the Floor final.  OU won the first semi-final, with Missouri edging Florida by 0.1 for the spot in the final.  Utah edged UCLA to win the other final, with LSU 0.2125 behind.  OU was the overwhelming choice of the coaches for the top spot in the WCGA Preseason Coaches' Poll, with 1960 points and 39 first place votes.  They are followed closely by a pack of five:  LSU with 1859 points and 5 first place votes, Florida with 1804 points and 4 first place votes, UCLA with 1784 points and 4 first place votes, and Utah, with 1751 votes and 1 first place votes.  Although the Coaches' votes tend to follow the final standings pretty closely, they did make several shifts in the poll versus the team's final ranking, elevating LSU to the 2nd spot and dropping Missouri down to 7th.  This likely acknowledges LSU's strong incoming class while also comprehending the large graduation losses at Missouri.  

A New Regional Qualifying Season Marks a Strategic Shift

The biggest change for the 2026 season comes not as a Code change, but a change in the way teams qualify for post-season competition.  Traditionally, teams could count their top 3 away scores, then take their next three highest scores, drop the highest and average the remaining five.  For this season, a new formula is being implemented.  It is intended to put more weight on the teams' performance for a full season and also reduce the influence of high "home town" scoring.  The new National Qualifying Score (NQS) goes as follows:

• At least nine meets must be counted.
• A minimum of five away meets are required.  
• A maximum of five home meets are to be counted.  If a team competes in more than five home meets, the highest will be dropped.   

To calculate the NQS, the following steps are followed:

1.  The max five home scores are identified (throwing out the highest if there are more than five)
2.  The remaining scores are arranged in descending order.0
3.  The minimum five away scores are verified.
4.  The high and low scores are dropped.
5.  The remaining scores are averaged.  

In addition, neutral site meets held less than 30 miles from a home arena can be counted just once as an away meet.  Any other meets within the 30 mile radius will count as a home meet  Conference meets are exempted from this rule.    

Individual qualifiers to Regionals (for athletes not part of a qualifying team in the post-season) will use the traditional formula.  

A New Regional Qualifying Method Marks a Strategic Shift

The increased emphasis on away meets and the limits placed on home meets mean that late-season high-scoring home meets may not materially shift a school's NQS average if they already have five home scores.  Conversely, low scoring home meets will tend to stick around a team's average.  While one can be dropped in the final tally, a second low home score (or any if there was a very low scoring away meet) will drag down a team's NQS.

This may also impact the way teams view lineups and preparation for the season.  In the past, some teams have shuffled their lineups against lower ranked opponents or late in the season, when a high score was not needed, or to give athletes that were lower on the depth chart a chance to compete.  This was especially true on "Senior Night" and/or for senior and fifth-year athletes.  Similarly, teams have been used to accepting slow starts, for pacing and to enable the frosh to gain more experience, because there was the ability to recover the team's NQS in the last six meets.  However, this formula has become more unfriendly to such a strategy, especially for early season home meets.  

This new NQS average, however, is most critical in ranking the Top 28 or so teams.  Teams want to avoid the extra play-in round, as it adds another night of competition at Regionals.  The new NQS ranking can also have an impact on seeding and start/end events for rotations at Regionals.          

New Roster Limits and Expanded Depth

The NCAA House Settlement created a new roster limit of 20 and eliminated scholarship limits.  It also created a class of "Designated Student Athletes" (DSA), starting with athletes for the 2025-2026 roster (including those recruited before the settlement terms were published).  The DSA designation has allowed some teams to exceed the new roster limits.  Some programs were also able to increase their scholarships over the prior limit of 12, creating opportunities to strengthen depth by adding athletes late in the recruiting cycle and via the transfer portal.  As a result, some teams have much more depth than in the past. 

Even though this is just the first year the new roster limits have taken effect, we are seeing teams with some very deep and extensive depth charts.  When combined with the new NQS formulas, finding competition time for those athletes may prove to be challenging, even in exhibition.  This will be especially true next season, when additional large recruiting classes enter the NCAA.  Whether this impacts future activity in the transfer portal or impacts future recruiting cycles may take another season or two to shake out.  Pending federal legislation may also have some unforeseen impacts.  

A Stable Code Could Produce Record Scores

We previously highlighted that there are very few material changes in the NCAA Code Modifications for 2025-2026 season in this article:  Link   These are changes the NCAA makes to the underlying judging rules in the Women's Development Program (WDP) Code of Points.  With virtually no changes and no clear direction on future implementations of last season's experimental SCORE Board review system, we can likely expect even higher scores this season.  

Two Passes Reign Supreme

With no changes to the NCAA Code Modifications, the adoption of two acro pass floor routines is on the rise, at least anecdotally, based on public preseason exhibitions and videos from training.  With few artistic or compositional deductions available in the code, judges are left with few tools to differentiate routines.  Routines that might be capped at 9.7 in the the Women's Development Program Level 10 code are eligible for 10s when the NCAA modifications are applied.  "Lopsided" routines with all tumbling in first third of the routine are being shown, with the only possible risk of deduction being 0.05 for "insufficient distribution" (due to "most difficult elements place in the same section of the exercise").          

Uneven Bars Continues to Reward Lower Risk

Both in the WDP Level 10 and NCAA ranks, the Maloney (toe-on counter-swing release from low to high bar) to Pak or Overshoot Handstand combination continues to be popular.  The NCAA took a step to reduce the combination bonus for these combos from 0.2 to 0.1 last season, but athletes simply compensated by adding a C circling skill in the routine, typically in the form of a toe-on to handstand before the Maloney.  These popular combinations and their variants also tend to reduce the risk of a fall on a single bar release element.  In addition, the most common deductions on the Maloney, leg separations upon the release and back swing, are harder to view from the side-based angle afforded to the judges.  What's more, there tends to be more opportunities for deductions and mistakes on a single bar release:  form (toe and leg), amplitude (release height), catch angle, catch distance (including arm bends), and "turnover" (counter motion or full extension before recatch).  Due to to the lower risk/reward in all the applicable scoring codes, both elite and level 10 gymnasts have been mastering the technique for a clean Maloney combination.  As a result, it has increasingly become a lower risk, lower deduction choice in the NCAA.      

Vault Continues as the Big Differentiator

While Beam remains the queen, the vault has continued to be a large differentiator among the top teams.  With parity and execution increasing, and an relatively easy code, the differences in team total scores among the teams challenging for spots in the Regional and National finals has been diminishing.  Digging a scoring hole of 0.2 on an event becomes more important as the teams begin to challenge for spots at Nationals and the Four on the Floor final.  In the preseason training, we are seeing some teams with 10 or more 10.0 start value vaults, raising the bar for National Title contenders.  There is an irony that even as the FX tumbling and UB releases get simpler, the pressure to upgrade on vault has been increasing.     

Link: Season Previews:  Teams #1 to #8

Link:  Season Preview:   Teams #9 to #16