I hope this isn't crushed out of them if/when these two go senior. Having girls with original choreography could be the thing that sets the USA apart from other countries, especially if the uneven bars situation doesn't improve.
Kyla Ross
Bridgette Caquatto
Alexandra Raisman
Sabrina Vega
Amanda Jetter
Madison Kocian
Morgan Smith
Briley Casanova
Sophina DeJesus
Katelyn Ohashi
Jordyn Wieber
Not surprised that Wieber was given a wild card position, being the current Golden Girl and all, not to mention that I'm calling her to be the USA representative for the Youth Olympics in Singapore next summer. It remains to be seen if teammate Kamerin Moore will get one of the remaining 7 spots. She recently had surgery to repair a torn labrum and as Chellsie Memmel can testify, the rehabilitation process is long and hard. Who knows if she'll be available to compete for the next year?
DeJesus impressed many with her FX choreo. Well, aside from the fact that she actually has some. But when you're the 2005 junior international hip hop champion, you have a certain reputation to uphold:
Ohashi, while not high on difficulty, has the lovely lines and grace that is typical of a GAGE gymnast. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes from her.
Jetter has recovered nicely from her back injury and a shaky Day 1 to come back strong on Day 2. CGA has strong UB workers, but unfortunately, their backs are destroyed before they can fully realize their potential. It's hard to be a fan of her and Cassandra Whitcomb knowing this.
Raisman just squeaked past Vega to grab the AA bronze. True to a Brestyan's gymnast, her bars are terrible, but her FX is amazing. She has the ability to do a 3.5 twist and could possibly do a quad in the future (she fell on her triple full today due to far too much power).
Speaking of Vega, she is high on the cute factor, but made too many mistakes and didn't quite meet the expectations put on her post-Classics. But she has high political favor given that her coach Teodora Ungreneau is a former Karolyi protégé.
Kyla Ross is the unexpected Jr. National Champion. Given that Vega made some mistakes and Wieber wasn't here to blow past the competition, it was nice to actually wonder who was going to win. I haven't seen much of Ross' gymnastics, but she's from Gym-Max, so I imagine that a German giant is somewhere in her UB routine.
Makayla Maroney is also from Gym-Max (not yet on the National Team) and competes an Amanar. She crashed it Day 1, but landed it well today. And that's about all she has going for her right now. Her D scores on all other events don't even go up to a 5.0. But the Amanar was enough to get Marta on her side. Reportedly, Marta went wild when Maroney landed her vault.
You provide a great service to sports nuts. You show sports that normally don't get airtime on other stations, like gymnastics, diving, and table tennis. Your online content is accessible to those outside of the United States. You show a great many things live. You don't believe in "if you missed it the first time around, sucks for you." I'm very pleased that you showed Classics and much, much more of Nationals than NBC itself ever has.
But come on! Would it really hurt to show the juniors, too? Today's juniors are tomorrow's seniors and NCAA competitors.
IG2 confirms that Alicia Sacramone is making a comeback. Surprising and yet, not totally for two reasons:
1.) Alicia can still fill a hole within the U.S. team. We need vaulters like whoa because it still hasn't caught on that if you train at the very least a DTY and another relatively mid-to-high level tariff vault (like a Rudi), you're likely to be named onto international teams.
2.) Olympic team final = Desire for redemption.
