Is there such a thing as perfection? In the world of sports, athletes everywhere have grown up learning that perfection is an unachievable facade and that there’s always something to improve.
So, how is there such a thing as a perfect routine in gymnastics?
The NCAA has been under fire recently from analysts and fans alike about the frequency of the perfect 10, the highest score a routine can receive. Week 3 of the 2024 college gymnastics season saw a jaw-dropping eight perfect 10s, the most ever seen in a single week in NCAA history.
Have the NCAA’s judges been too lenient to start the 2024 season?
Like any sport, with human officials, referees, umpires, or, in this case, judges, comes human error. Judges are people, too, and with everything moving so fast, it can be hard to catch every little minute mistake in such a short time. Others have suggested that some judges are biased toward certain gymnasts and programs, but there’s no reasonable evidence to back any of these claims.
“I believe that 99 percent of judges have their heart in the right place and are trying to do the right thing,” Michigan head coach Bev Plocki said.
The influx of perfect 10s comes at a pivotal time in college gymnastics. The sport’s popularity is soaring, and some of the world’s finest gymnasts perform nationwide every weekend.
Have college gymnasts gotten too good at gymnastics?
The top 36 teams in the country attend nationals every year. National qualifying team scores for 1st and 10th place have increased by over a point since 2010, with the team placing 36th coming closer to a two-point increase.
While the sport’s talent level is at an all-time high, there’s something about the recent increase in perfect 10s that makes it feel less remarkable than it used to be.
But a routine that deserves a 10 should be given a 10, right?
In 2011, only two routines received a perfect 10 all season. In 2023, we saw 80 routines deemed perfect, a 40x increase, and we will see a lot more in 2024. January of 2023 saw 12 perfect 10s, while this January saw 20.
College gymnastics’ perfect 10 problem is a challenging fix; it’s a balancing act, a scale. Right now, the perfect 10 is a little less rare than it should be, but when you tip the scale the other way, suddenly, a perfect 10 is unachievable.
“I’m all for the 10,” California-Berkeley co-head coach Justin Howell said. “I think that it’s good for our sport. I hope we don’t get to a place where it is diluted.”
Too much of a good thing isn’t good, but without the good thing, we lose what makes this sport so special in the first place.
College gymnastics routines are usually shorter and more straightforward, according to many former gymnasts.
Less time to perform means less time for mistakes. For an event like the balance beam, coaches have emphasized to their gymnasts the importance of doing what they need to do and ending their routine as quickly as possible without taking any huge swings.
The risk of possibly single-handedly losing your squad’s meet isn’t worth the reward.
“It’s like, ‘Don’t do more than you need to, get up there and do a perfect routine because they’re throwing out 10s,'” former two-time Olympic medalist Kathy Johnson Clarke said.
Johnson Clarke wants the judges to pinpoint what they’re looking for and genuinely grade those routine aspects accurately to the best of their ability.
“The code needs to be streamlined, condensed and transparent so everybody is on the same page,” said Johnson Clarke. “They need to choose. What’s most important? Technical mastery? Amplitude? Pick five things.”
Some have argued for cutting the number of participants in each event to five to increase the margin of error and put pressure on every routine, knowing the entire meet could come down to a couple of decimal points. Johnson Clarke isn’t a massive fan of this, either.
“They will get less chances, do we want that?” Johnson Clark said. “We’ve got to think all of the things that it would trigger, all the things it would change and that makes gymnastics a little bit less exciting.”
Others like Howell say it may only take a slight rule change or two to tip the scale back to even. Howell suggests restoring the middle line on the vault map so that judges have a better idea of where the gymnast is lying and if they should take off for it, which would only help the judges be more accurate.
“That should be logical, I think,” Howell said. “The lines are there now to kind of show everybody, ‘That was really crooked, you should take a deduction.'”
Whether it’ll take a significant rule change or a minor fix, the only way the NCAA can fix their perfect 10 problem is by having the courage to try something different.