Floor exercise showdown.
Six NCAA champions enter.
One leaves.
You decide.
2013 NCAA Floor Champion – Joanna Sampson
2012 NCAA Floor Champion – Kat Ding
Showing posts with label Floor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Floor. Show all posts
November 25, 2013
September 29, 2013
Skill Frequency 2013
A few months back, I began looking at the frequency with which skills appeared in US WAG routines in 2012 with the idea that I would then do the same thing for 2013 and compare the numbers to see how the code change was affecting routine composition. Then, I never did that. Fortunately, Uncle Tim tweeted me saying, "If you don't do those goddamn skill frequencies for 2013, I will stab you in the eye with a grapefruit spoon." (It may not have been exactly that. Who can remember?)
So, here we go. While you take a break from speculating about McKayla Maroney's bars capabilities and Aliya Mustafina's floor endurance, enjoy some charts. With colors! The colors are supposed to be red and blue, but you never know with me, so if they're actually purple and orange, just deal with it.
As before, the percentages next to the skills indicate the proportion of gymnasts who performed each skill at National Championships, and skills are sorted by the frequency of their appearances in 2013 senior routines. Some basic skills like giant swings and back handsprings are not included because, obviously 100%. Numbers from 2013 and 2012 are listed side-by-side for easy comparison. Cells highlighted in blue reflect an increase in frequency of at least 10 percentage points over 2012, while cells highlighted in red reflect a decrease of at least the same amount. For the most part, any change less than that is statistically insignificant given the small number of routines we're working with (especially for the seniors). Even some of the larger changes may be attributable to normal variation in routine construction rather than code influence, but I'll talk through some of the larger changes as we go.
NOTES: Because there were so many more juniors, the junior routines have a much larger bearing on the total frequency column. Also, the charts include only skills performed during 2013 Nationals. Many skills dropped off the charts from 2012, but none that were performed more than one or two times last year. I didn't do vault because it's fairly straightforward. Yurchenko land. I classified the skills by what was attempted rather than what would actually be credited because this is about intended composition.
UNEVEN BARS
The toe-on full continues to reign as the D pirouetting skill of choice. Even though this code emphasizes release+release combinations, the toe-on full is still a valuable tool connected to a tkatchev or transition for .1 CV.
What's interesting is that the trend favoring toe-on skills over stalder skills seems to be increasing for the seniors, but the opposite is taking place for the juniors. There is a marked increase in the frequency of several of the stalder skills for the juniors. I'm not sure if there is a tangible reason for that, but it's happening. It should be noted that the large majority of those junior stalder fulls might be finishing their turns sometime by the end of the year. Maybe.
So, the Gienger died. That's weird, right? Very abrupt and very dead. The Jaeger just consumed it, apparently. Natural selection. We saw tons of toe-on Tkatchevs this year from the seniors. There are still fewer E releases being performed than I would expect given the new code, but it's early days, and this was not a particularly astounding bars group. They were just happy to get their jaegers in and get out of there.
So, here we go. While you take a break from speculating about McKayla Maroney's bars capabilities and Aliya Mustafina's floor endurance, enjoy some charts. With colors! The colors are supposed to be red and blue, but you never know with me, so if they're actually purple and orange, just deal with it.
As before, the percentages next to the skills indicate the proportion of gymnasts who performed each skill at National Championships, and skills are sorted by the frequency of their appearances in 2013 senior routines. Some basic skills like giant swings and back handsprings are not included because, obviously 100%. Numbers from 2013 and 2012 are listed side-by-side for easy comparison. Cells highlighted in blue reflect an increase in frequency of at least 10 percentage points over 2012, while cells highlighted in red reflect a decrease of at least the same amount. For the most part, any change less than that is statistically insignificant given the small number of routines we're working with (especially for the seniors). Even some of the larger changes may be attributable to normal variation in routine construction rather than code influence, but I'll talk through some of the larger changes as we go.
NOTES: Because there were so many more juniors, the junior routines have a much larger bearing on the total frequency column. Also, the charts include only skills performed during 2013 Nationals. Many skills dropped off the charts from 2012, but none that were performed more than one or two times last year. I didn't do vault because it's fairly straightforward. Yurchenko land. I classified the skills by what was attempted rather than what would actually be credited because this is about intended composition.
UNEVEN BARS
The toe-on full continues to reign as the D pirouetting skill of choice. Even though this code emphasizes release+release combinations, the toe-on full is still a valuable tool connected to a tkatchev or transition for .1 CV.
What's interesting is that the trend favoring toe-on skills over stalder skills seems to be increasing for the seniors, but the opposite is taking place for the juniors. There is a marked increase in the frequency of several of the stalder skills for the juniors. I'm not sure if there is a tangible reason for that, but it's happening. It should be noted that the large majority of those junior stalder fulls might be finishing their turns sometime by the end of the year. Maybe.
So, the Gienger died. That's weird, right? Very abrupt and very dead. The Jaeger just consumed it, apparently. Natural selection. We saw tons of toe-on Tkatchevs this year from the seniors. There are still fewer E releases being performed than I would expect given the new code, but it's early days, and this was not a particularly astounding bars group. They were just happy to get their jaegers in and get out of there.
July 1, 2013
2012 Skill Frequency - Floor and Vault
I might as well finish off the bunch with floor and vault frequency.
As always, the tables below show the frequency with which gymnasts performed skills as 2012 Visa Championships, this time on floor and vault as measured by the % of total routines featuring the given skill.
We'll start with the various categories of floor skills, and the pathetically small vault table will follow at the end.
Clearly, the back 1.5 C skill connected into an E tumble dominates the composition. I'm of several minds about this. On the one hand, I don't think any skills besides handsprings and round offs should be appearing in 90% of routines. That's evidence of a code that is too limiting, ensuring there is but one realistic solution to receive the sought-after .2 CV. On the other hand, I love a combination pass. When done well, they are so much more interesting than straightforward tumbles, even difficult ones. So, if that's the kind of combo pass we get, I'm in favor.
That said, I have absolutely no problem with the elimination of the combo pass requirement. The combo pass is so valuable for CV that this has little effect on composition. People will still perform as many misguided combinations to try to get a bigger D score as they did before, but my hope is that perhaps the lack of requirement will cause some to get rid of combinations they were barely getting through in the first place and doing only to fulfill the requirement. The most common combination performed, especially in the seniors, was the 1.5 through to double back, and very few of them were good ideas. Let's get rid of them, McKayla.
While there are some other problems with repetitive composition (every junior dismounted with a 2.5, people perform the double back and the double pike in the same routine) few of the skills appear in more than half of routines, and the problems with repetition seem overall less severe than on bars and beam.
P.S. Why does nobody perform the DLO in elite anymore?
As always, the tables below show the frequency with which gymnasts performed skills as 2012 Visa Championships, this time on floor and vault as measured by the % of total routines featuring the given skill.
We'll start with the various categories of floor skills, and the pathetically small vault table will follow at the end.
Clearly, the back 1.5 C skill connected into an E tumble dominates the composition. I'm of several minds about this. On the one hand, I don't think any skills besides handsprings and round offs should be appearing in 90% of routines. That's evidence of a code that is too limiting, ensuring there is but one realistic solution to receive the sought-after .2 CV. On the other hand, I love a combination pass. When done well, they are so much more interesting than straightforward tumbles, even difficult ones. So, if that's the kind of combo pass we get, I'm in favor.
That said, I have absolutely no problem with the elimination of the combo pass requirement. The combo pass is so valuable for CV that this has little effect on composition. People will still perform as many misguided combinations to try to get a bigger D score as they did before, but my hope is that perhaps the lack of requirement will cause some to get rid of combinations they were barely getting through in the first place and doing only to fulfill the requirement. The most common combination performed, especially in the seniors, was the 1.5 through to double back, and very few of them were good ideas. Let's get rid of them, McKayla.
While there are some other problems with repetitive composition (every junior dismounted with a 2.5, people perform the double back and the double pike in the same routine) few of the skills appear in more than half of routines, and the problems with repetition seem overall less severe than on bars and beam.
P.S. Why does nobody perform the DLO in elite anymore?
November 10, 2012
Ranking the 2012 Floor Final
Continuing the mission to pick the real winner of things, it's time to look at the 2012 NCAA Floor Final, a.k.a. the vacation home of our very best friend, controversy.
Unlike the vault 10s, in this case we do have an actual winner. Kat Ding won the title with a 9.950 over the 9.9375s for Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs and Geralen Stack-Eaton. There were . . . a lot of opinions about this result the first time around, so it will be interesting to see how things have developed now that we've had months to reflect.
The top 5 finishers are included below. Watch the routines and rank how you think they should have finished. I did not include the 9.900 routines from Zamarripa, Dickerson, and DeZiel because, while they were solid performances, none would be mistaken for a potential winner. The real shame is that Jaime Pisani probably should have been our floor champ, but she didn't have a strong performance in the final.
(Where would we be without NastiaFan101 uploading all these individual routines?)
Kat Ding - 9.950
Unlike the vault 10s, in this case we do have an actual winner. Kat Ding won the title with a 9.950 over the 9.9375s for Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs and Geralen Stack-Eaton. There were . . . a lot of opinions about this result the first time around, so it will be interesting to see how things have developed now that we've had months to reflect.
The top 5 finishers are included below. Watch the routines and rank how you think they should have finished. I did not include the 9.900 routines from Zamarripa, Dickerson, and DeZiel because, while they were solid performances, none would be mistaken for a potential winner. The real shame is that Jaime Pisani probably should have been our floor champ, but she didn't have a strong performance in the final.
(Where would we be without NastiaFan101 uploading all these individual routines?)
Kat Ding - 9.950
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