Injury is an inherent part of any athletic endeavor and no one understands this better than college coaches. There are many prospects and families who hedge when bringing up the topic of injury as part of the college process, with fear that a coach will see this as a weakness and therefore diminish recruiting opportunities.

For those of you that have competed at this meet several times, you know what to expect. For the first time qualifier, it may be a little overwhelming. CONGRATS TO ALL!

Twelve teams have made it to St. Louis, and will battle it out over the weekend for the National Championships.  It all starts Friday, and we'll have live links up as usual and links to all the coverage as it happens.  On Friday, we start with the Preliminaries, with six teams looking to be one of three teams that advance from each session to the Super Six finals. 

For 36 teams, the season has built up to one day, the Regionals and the 12 teams that will qualify to the National semi-finals.  There are six Regions and the top two teams in each Region will qualify to Nationals.  Through the proliferation of online video and Conference TV networks, we've been able to follow the progress of every member of each and every Regional.  Here's how the field shakes down. 

How early is too early to recruit gymnasts to college? I recently met with a family that has a daughter who is on the USA Gymnastics developmental team. Their daughter is in seventh grade and is feeling pressure to figure out which college is best for her future. College gymnastics coaches have come to watch her practice and she is seeing other girls from the developmental program verbally commit and posting this on social media. If you ask any college gymnastics coach, they will tell you that they would prefer to wait till sophomore or junior year of high school…