NCAA Tiana at UCLA early

[rlayt]

 

[QuietColours]

Sounds like someone had a realistic talk with her about her chances and she decided to go with starting college on time with the rest of her year instead. Sad, though--I really would love to see her on a world stage. I will die on the hill that her beam would have been used in team finals.

 

[Sasha]

Huh, I wonder what prompted the apparent change of plans. Regardless, that's a get for UCLA.

 

[RedBirdie]

Her Instagram says her ankle is still very sensitive and its best that she go to UCLA now and rehab it before the season starts.

 

[Puffin]

I think it's a wise decision to look ahead to the end goal. She looked like she needed some additional time so better to wait and not risk it for an individual Worlds

 

[irichluck21]

She had very little chance to make the World Team so it is a wise decision to rehab and get into school where they have physical therapy options.

I can see her doing bars and beam her freshman year. She doesn't need a same bar release, which was her challenge in elite.

 

[Aeris]

Awaiting her glorious NCAA bar routine:

chow + overshoot + stand on low bar
stalder + C dismount

 

[makam]

She had very little chance to make the World Team so it is a wise decision to rehab and get into school where they have physical therapy options.

I can see her doing bars and beam her freshman year. She doesn't need a same bar release, which was her challenge in elite.

That said, maybe the college coaches can help her have a breakthrough for a good routine. At least good enough to stop holding her back.

 

[irichluck21]

Janelle is an amazing bars coach so she's in one of the best of capable hands to do so.

 

[Aeris]

She doesn't need a "bars coach", just a proper code-hacked routine. Her cast handstands and overall form on the skills she needs to do are already good. She struggles a lot with pirouettes, but those aren't needed in NCAA, nor any difficult releases (including dismount).

The stalder/clear-hip shaposh ridiculously being upgraded to E in NCAA, and the regular stalder circle being a D, provides a very simple 10.0 routine for her. She'll just need a tiny bit of training time for the overshoot (not to handstand, to be clear) since she wasn't doing that in elite.

But I won't be surprised if the coaches give her a dumber routine. I didn't see a single person abusing the Chow/Shaposh + overshoot composition this past season. If they keep her on the Shaposh+Pak train then she's going to need to do a Cast 1/2 to get back to high bar, and that's where the problems will happen. Similarly if they keep forcing a harder dismount instead of the Stalder + C dismount (something I've bizarrely only seen Riley McCusker utilize to date, and only with a double salto. In the current rules you don't even need a Stalder anymore, Toe-circle + any C dismount is now accepted, assuming the interior of the routine has enough bonus already).

 

[QuietColours]

I think how much she needs a good bars coach depends on if she wants to continue with elite in college. As is, she could do a competent 10.0 routine as long as they don't change the composition requirements to include a same-bar release. But if she wants to continue elite, her bars are a huge part of what's holding her back. She has improved, significantly, from this:



But she needs to be able to consistently hit a 13 on bars or make herself completely undeniable on another event. The most likely event for that is beam, and that's the chanciest event to try to be so good they have to take you on.

 

[Aeris]

I think how much she needs a good bars coach depends on if she wants to continue with elite in college.

The problem being, what's good for NCAA and Elite are completely different things. The best thing an NCAA coach might be able to give her (given the lack of capability they've shown with Elite routines) is a better full pirouette, but it's probably not worth putting that skill into her NCAA routine, given she'll likely always have more struggles with it than a stalder circle.

With regards to her elite UB, I think she should learn Endos and C single bar release out of a shap. I see her being able to do a 5.8 routine with pretty good execution if she goes that direction.