Welcome to another episode of Gymnasticsville. I'm your host Midnight Robin. We here on gymnasticsville.com, the voice of acrobatics every week. You can listen to us on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, and now Spotify.
This is gonna be a great show. Ladies and gentlemen, we gonna switch it up. We gonna have the first ever of its kind, the backflip debates. Yes, okay.
All right, I didn't know that was what was gonna sweet. I like it. All right, so our contestants today. First up, we have Cody Trowball coming in from Georgia.
All right, next up, AKA the action figure. Y'all know him by Kerry Adderley from Orlando, Florida. How you doing, Kerry? I'm good.
I'm good, man. It's a little chilly down here too. You know, a nice little 50-degree weather. What you know about chili in Florida?
Yeah, not much right now, but it's getting there. It's worth enough for a long sleeve. All right, and rounding up the trifecta. We got Taki Abdul-issimus, AKA the incredible hawk.
How you doing out there? Back under Taki in Australia. Down under, but yeah, I'm doing great. I'm doing great.
It's almost supposed to be a summer starting next week, but it doesn't really feel like it here either. That's great. Well, I'm freezing my tail off out here in Pennsylvania, but we're gonna get going with the first question. Byersale, as of now, Sam McCoolick is a five-time national champion, and he is now tied with five-time national champion, Blaine Wilson.
Byersale, Sam McCoolick is more decorated than Blaine Wilson as of right now. Kerry, you go first. I mean, I'm gonna buy it. I mean, you went to championships and he won convincingly.
And yeah, I'll buy it for now, you know, until somebody else steps up and takes the championship from him, then he's that guy. So I'm definitely buying it. He, you know, he hit some really good routines. He got a medal at World Championships.
Sam also, you know, he won events at USA Championships, you know, placing in the top three and several events. So absolutely I'm buying it. He's a national champion and, you know, most decorated. No, no, the question was Kerry, is Sam more decorated at this point than Blaine Wilson and all that Blaine Wilson accomplished?
Buy or sell that? 20 seconds left? Yeah, I'm buying it. I'm definitely buying it because, you know, Sam's got a world medal.
Blaine's got a Olympic medal. So, you know, maybe Sam can change that here in his next Olympics and, you know, be able to be the most decorated US champion after that. Okay, I'm gonna give you one point for that. How about next up?
Taki? I'm gonna have to buy that just because obviously the Olympic medal means a lot, but Blaine never won an individual World Olympic medal. Sam is my first and I think Sam might have more NCAA hardware as well. So I'm gonna have to give it to Sam because he had a more decorated NCAA career and has won an international world or Olympic medal to this point.
So you're one with the team. So you're saying a world medal is bigger for Sam than Blaine's Olympic silver medal? It was a team and I'm not saying anything, but you know, we've got individually like, you know, Blaine did not bring home. Unfortunately, the hardware is an individual at World's Olympics.
I'll give him, I'll give Sam one notch for that. And then his NCAA career was better because I think he won three times one. He was on the team. I think Blaine maybe won once or twice.
So, and then probably Sam had more All Americans because Sam, you know, was dominating. So, I believe me, if it was weird to say that, but I'm gonna go Sam. All right. One point for Taki.
How about you, Cody? One point for Taki. I'm gonna sell and I'm gonna sell because I think that I'm gonna weigh the team Olympic medal over the individual World medal. And that's because I saw I'm gonna be a little partial because, you know, Blaine went to Ohio State as well, but he led that team and I saw what he brought to the table, especially from the team atmosphere for USA Gymnastics.
And I think that that during that period, he he led the team. And I think when he won his Olympic medal, wasn't that his third Olympics. So he had paid his dues and put together a good team and led the way. All right.
I'm gonna give Cody two points here. I like it only because the team, we all about team here in gymnastics, they'll yes, an Olympic silver medal definitely trumps individual medal in this night book. Okay, but it's individual question. Anyway, moving on.
Next question. All right. Here we go. Hypothetically, you're at team finals at a major competition.
You can pick any gym, so any error, who would you pick and why? Carried from United States? What? Any from anywhere?
Any anybody? Anybody. You need one gym that's on the line. Who are you picking and why?
I'm I'm gonna pick, I would definitely say I'm gonna pick Paul Haim. And the reason I would pick Paul Haim is because he was so dominant at his time in that the early 2000s into 2004, winning World Championship after World Championship and then to winning the Olympic Championship. I mean, the Olympics, I'm sorry. I would definitely go with Paul Haim as my guy because I was there.
I was watching the train. I mean, he was just amazing. So I definitely have to go with Paul Haim for sure. He's my guy.
All right. How about you, Cody? I have to agree with Kerry on this one on Paul Haim. I think, you know, given the clutchness in the Olympics and his ability to come back after falling down.
And then, you know, I'd like to say preparation, but I've seen a lot of high level gymnasts. I mean, they all prepare or prepare to the max. Paul Haim, you know, it's clutch gymnast. All right.
How about you, Taki? I'm going name off. Name off. I'm going name off.
He went to three Olympics, one as a team, one as an individual. And then even, you know, I think he was any time for first in 2004. So I think he won a gold medal in almost every Olympic Games and has done it in every situation has probably almost the most world medals. So I'm going to give it to name off because, you know, he was in like winning situations a lot and he came through a lot.
So I'm going to go with name off. All right. Taki two points. Taki wins that round.
Next up, what's harder at the end of a routine, a triple back on rings or a triple back on a high bar? Taki, you go for who? For anyone or for anyone? Hey, for anyone, I'm just saying, I'm just saying if you could do both of them, I guess, if you could do both of them, right?
What would be harder to do? The most objective contest of all time. But let's go for it. I'm going to say rings just because, well, it also depends on how hard routine is in front of it.
But I'm going to say ring just because when you're pretty gassed, you know, you have to actually work to make a triple off rings. High bar is all about a good tap. All right. How about you, Cody?
I think the triple pike on high bar. And for that exact reason, you're gassed in both of those scenarios. And I understand the tap is different. But if I were to be gassed and I were to land short, I would not want to land short with locked legs as I would with tucked legs and to be able to.
Oh, he's got to be able to. Oh, I'm going definitively triple pike just because, you know, if I am gassed, I want the ability to be able to not land short with locked legs and blow the knees out of my back the back of my legs. Get a answer. How about you, Cody?
Two points for you. Go, Kerry. I would, I'm going to have to say the triple, I think the triple pike off a rings is the triple pretty tough. No, no, no, no, no, no.
I said triple, off a rings, triple pike off a high bar. Oh, triple tuck offering. Sorry. All right.
I'm going to have to go with the triple pike. Yes. Absolutely. I'm going with the triple pike because one, I've never done a triple pike off a high bar.
I have done a triple tuck off a rings and not even a remote after a set. So, definitely going with the triple pike off a high bar is harder because as Cody explained it, lock legs possible. I mean, yeah, you guess and you could, I mean, you can make it to the triple pike, even if you trained it sometimes you just paint off the bar and so. Okay, your definitely no even chance for the triple pike.
So who's going to go on a triple pike? Okay, I'm going to give the knot to Cody on that round. Cody, you want that round with two points. Okay, I'm going to give you a point, but Cody made all the points first.
So I got to give the knot to Cody on that round. See, I missed that's good because I think I lost the two first round. So you should get a minus point for this. Well, you have a down button.
I need to get one. There's like a round. Here we go. Next question.
By yourself, Justin Spring is the best coach in the big 10. Cody Droval, you go first. That's a tough question. I'm not sure.
I'm thinking about how I want to answer that question because I think Justin Spring has a fresh mind and from a recruiting perspective, he's done a good job with the University of Illinois to bring in some talent. From a coaching perspective, you know, I'm kind of biased. I have a lot of respect for Ristam. I know Kirk Golder's done a lot of stuff with the University of Michigan.
You know, because of where the program has gone under Justin Spring and how much more dominant Illinois is today than it was 10 years ago and everyone else is pretty much at the same place or somewhere in the same realm. I'd say Justin Spring, I'd buy that. All right. And just so everyone knows Justin Spring was the youngest coach ever to win an NCAA championship at the rightful young age of 28.
All right. Taki, you're next. Yeah. Buy yourself Justin Spring, the best coach of the 10.
Buy yourself. That's a tough one. I'm going to sell. I'm going to sell.
I think he, you know, there's still more that he needs to do to be considered the best. So I'm going to sell that, you know, his career has been short. You know, he had, he did win at a very young age, but you know, this is his first time I went to big 10 title in quite a few years this past year. So, you know, I think he needs to be a little bit more sustained success.
Did you know he has four big 10 titles in his coaching career? Yeah, no, I know that. I get that. But I still think, you know, other people have, you know, Kurt Golder has quite a few national championships, been around a while.
Randy Justin, you know, Kurt Golded, I think he has like five, you know, four or five, I think Randy Jefferson has three. So, you know, you know, national championships do matter. And you know, they have been in positions in years past two, win them and they have come up short a few times. So, no, I'm going to sell that right now.
But by the time of the end of his career, he might be considered one of the greatest big 10 coaches ever. Carrie, buy yourself Justin Spring, the best coach in the big 10. Um, I'm definitely, I'm going to buy it. You know, I'm a proponent of what have you done for me lately and lately he's the big 10 champion.
So, I'm definitely going to buy it. You know, I've been critical of Justin over the past couple seasons. I'm, you know, a couple things. I'm nothing too serious, but you know, he's handled it well.
He keeps his guys prepared. They're always competing for the championship. They're always in the hunt every single year. Even on the off year, they're able to upset and win the big 10 and then going into the AA is a possible contender.
So, I'm definitely going to buy it because he's, he's been dominant, dominant lately. And he kind of regained his dominant. Ohio State won a couple and then boom, he came back and got it back. So, I'm definitely going to buy it with Justin Spring being the top coaching of big 10 right now.
Tell somebody can dethrone him, you know, until another program steps up and, you know, makes a good run to kind of secure more of a, that ranking is the top big 10 team. So, let's see what happens here. All right. All right.
Carrie, you won your first round. Good job. Two points for you. Yeah.
Yeah. All right. Yeah. Yeah.
Now, as we look on to next year's World Championships and looking at team USA, what coach do you feel should get the knot as team USA? Hey, coach, talky, we're going to go with you first. I would just say Mark, obviously. You know, it's not too confident about that.
Well, no, because I just think it's ridiculous question. I just at this point, well, he was not the head coach this year. So, it's not that ridiculous. Well, yeah.
But, you know, anyway, that doesn't mean anything. It's still a ridiculous question. Most people would answer the same, would answer the way I answer. I don't think any of these other two guys are going to say anything else.
But maybe they will. Who knows? But, you know, it's a team competition. It should go to the person that generally has the best team success in my book.
So, it's obvious to me. Hey, and I just, all right. How about you, Cody? That's to me.
Mark Williams. How about you, Cody? You know, I actually spent some time ranking this. I think that there's, there's three top coaches.
It's Mark Williams. Mark Williams and Mark Williams. Yeah. Okay.
All right. That was short sweet. How about you, Carrie? Hey, just like, you know, they're I'm going to have to third that.
I mean, the book, they are, you're right. I know what you're about to say. You're about to say they're also some other credible, really good coaches. But, when you just look at the body of work right now, in this last decade, there's just one clear cut.
There's one clear cut person that runs a team program and produces. And so, if team USA and cannot see that, then, then, you know, that's, that's what will happen. And we will probably not get the results that Mark Williams can produce. You know, if we want to win, which he does, I think that is our best bet.
Let's go with the coach Mark Williams as the Olympic head coach. All right. Let me, let me, let me answer what percentage of the current national team are current or previous OU, uh, Janice? 33.
And then, and then in the last world team, what was the percentage of people who were OU or former OU, Janice? And then going back to the Olympic team, the last Olympic team. Isn't somewhere in the 30 to 50 percent? It's, it's, yeah.
So, Mark Williams, Mark Williams, Mark Williams. All right. Well, you know, since no one else wants to mention anyone else, as if Mark Williams is the only coach on his painted deck to do it, let's not forget about Rustam Sherpuff, who's won a team gold medal. Okay.
Back in the day with Sherbo, Masoudin, but linky. Okay. And then he came back on an individual medal. Okay.
With Ukraine on parall bars and then was the assistant coach to Mark and won some championships and then just got finished winning back to back big 10 titles before Illinois just took over. So there's other coaches as well out there. No, the question was not are there other qualified coaches? It's who should be the coach.
And right now, given Mark's track record, it's Mark Williams, right? I mean, he, what he's doing with OU and the way that they're competing at a team, the preparation that they have, the selection of the lineups and their ability to compete at a high level year in and year out, says something and he's doing that right now, not that, not because he was on a team back in 1996. He's doing that right now and he's proving it and he's putting more people on national team. He continues to put people on world teams.
He continues to put people on Olympic teams. He's to me, the clear cut candidate. It's not that Rouss Dom couldn't do a good job. I just think Mark is proving more than anyone else that he has the ability to do it.
All right, Cody, you won that round. Everybody won that round. Midnight, she get a minus point. Well, Midnight Hostin, so y'all lucky on that one today.
All right. All right. Exactly. All right.
By herself, Alec Yoder will overtake two-time national pomores champion from Penn State, Steven Nirocic at next year's NCAA championships. By herself, we're going to go talkie first. Selling it. I'm going to sell.
I'm going to sell. I think Steven's going for Mark Zone, another, he's going for four. Alec is an all-arounder, so he has other things to pay attention to. So I think when it comes down to it, NCAA's, Steven has just locked in for that set.
That's just how I think. So you get better. Yeah, he gets better and better every year. So I'm selling.
I'm going to sell that Yoder's going to beat him. Okay. So you're selling that last year's NCAA MVP is not going to overtake Steven Nirocic. All right.
How about your take, Cody? I'm going to buy go bucks, but I also see, I mean, to, I guess, to counter Taki's point, I think, you know, at the level that Alec's competing right now, making a world team, he's going to continue to improve. He's put himself in an environment where he's going to compete stronger and stronger in these international events. He's going to go to NCAA's.
It's just going to be another thing and he's going to kill it and, you know, I'm going to buy. All right, Kerry, finish it off. Yes. I'm going to buy it as well.
Love to see the young Buckeye get an individual title and horse. He's all American, you know, several times already. So yeah, you know, I think he can put it together. I mean, that's one event that seems that comes fairly easy to him.
And I think that Alec can definitely take it. Go bucks. Finish this sentence. Ohio State will finish blank at the end of the college season rankings.
Kerry. I would have to say Ohio State is going to finish. I'm going to say fourth. I'm going to say fourth.
The reason I'm saying fourth is because they definitely have to prove themselves from last year. And, you know, my ranking right now would be Oklahoma. And then I would go with Illinois. And then I would go with Minnesota.
So that would be my ranking right now if I were to pick. And then I would say Ohio State would be fourth. All right. All right.
How about you, Taki? I will concur with Kerry. I actually do think it'll be fourth place. Find out for top three.
But yeah, probably fourth place in my estimation as well. Cody. I'm going to go out of top three. I'll just say five since they said four.
But I mean, I'd say four or five to just because I think they're going to be a little bit in a rebuild. It's hard to replace Sean Melton. He's done such a good job for that program over the last couple years. And ultimately right now you have Alec Yoder.
But are you going to have anybody next to him like a Sean Melton? Maybe somebody will come up that that we're that we don't know about right now. But right now that it's going to be harder to replace Sean. All right.
Well, I'm going to give the nod to Cody for mentioning that Sean Melton was that was a big loss to a higher state and probably a big reason why they may not finish in the top three. So good point for you there, Cody. Buy yourself the open-ended scoring system versus some of the other scoring systems that have come up in gymnastics history. Buy yourself the open-ended scoring system.
Taki, you seem like you want to go first. Go. I'm selling it. The F.I.G.
is doing a poor job with this open-ended system. The whole reason was to get high score and higher points and be able to maybe see some of gymnastics score 100 in the all around. But then you move the bar every four years. It's not open-ended if you change it all the time.
It's like, oh yes, we know. Someone's figuring it out. Oh, no, no you haven't. Let's change it up.
So I'm buying this what they sold the open-ended system on. So you're selling it. Selling it. I'm sorry.
I'm selling it. It's ridiculous. They sold us on high scores, possibly scoring 100. And then now you have people scoring the lowest all around scores, since its inception.
Great job. Cody, your thoughts? Buy yourself. I'm going to buy it.
I do agree with Taki as they continue to move the bar. But I think it allows for expansion of the difficulty of the sport. I think people are more willing to go for bigger skills and more difficulty. I know there's danger associated with that.
But if you stick to a limited, let's just call it a 10.0 system, I think people do the simplest skills. Everybody ends up doing the same skills. We saw that back and before everything changed. What was it?
2004, where it came to this or was it 2008? I can't remember what the year was. So yeah, so when that happened, when you mainly saw it's like everyone was doing a stood-to-one bar. Everyone was doing two pelts on P-bars.
Everybody ends up doing the same sequences in order to get the same bonus. It just tries to execute the same way. And there's no diversity in the skill sets that are being done on the sport. I think it still happens today to a degree.
But there's an expansion of difficulty. I would say that the only counter to that is that there's always going to be one person that's far better than everybody else and they're probably going to run away with it. And you're not going to get the same level of competitiveness or closeness in the sport of people who can compete at the same level. There's going to be a larger degree of discrepancy between first and third place versus being able to create more of an execution base.
So I think the question is more of like, do you appreciate the execution piece or do you appreciate the difficulty? I appreciate the expansion and pushing the limits of human ability. And I think that the open-ended scoring system allows for that to happen more than the 10.0 system does. Cari?
I'm going to sell it. The reason I'm going to sell it is because we can come up with something, they can come up with something different. Just like they've been changing it, I think they can maybe change it to something that can better suit the audience and something that will help the fans have a better understanding of what's happening and how the scoring is. And I do understand that, yes, when they do change it that also has taken away from it.
But I think if they, with the scope of everything that's been going on in gymnastics, I think trying to go for another change, and it doesn't have to be a super drastic change, but just small details maybe to things that they already have in place that can help enhance it, just like in the NFL. They keep adding rules and taking away rules every year. Baseball does it. So, you know, obviously there's still kind of one main set that hasn't changed, but they have little things here and there that you can modify.
So that's what I'm proponent of, of doing something like that to the rules that can help also enhance the fanfare and just the fans more engaged with gymnastics as a sport and not just watching performance, but also to get them engaged in the stats of attitude and understanding it. And I think that would help grow a little bit better. I'm going to throw this out there. Obviously gymnastics has issues for a long time, but some of the issues that are coming about with these scandals is also a result to the open-ended system and kids needing to push harder skills at a younger age and parents just giving them kids to their coaches and just like, hey, my kid great.
Your gymnastics wasn't so difficult at this higher, at the highest level than these kids wouldn't need to be doing these hours. They wouldn't be pushed so young and it's made it really dangerous for a lot of kids at a younger age. Kids are doing things they shouldn't be doing, catastrophic injuries. Don't know the stats, but I would imagine they're probably higher because kids are doing things that they shouldn't be doing at a younger age.
So I'm just going to say the open-ended system was not really well thought of when it comes to the level of difficulty at such a young age and it needs to be monitored. My only argument to that would be that Dominic Mochi-honor was complaining about abuse in the sport and the pressure that was being applied to young gymnastics at a young age before the open-ended system occurred. Yeah, but notice that she was young and dominating at 14. That would never happen.
She was living in the old days. Like how she is being pushed at that age is how people are being pushed nowadays at a greater number. That's a good point. All right, Taki wins that round.
All right guys and this is the final round, the lightning round. Here we go. Who do you think is or was the most influential gymnast? I didn't say best.
I didn't say you know greatest champion but the most influential gymnast of all time. You define influential? Influential making an impact on the sport. Who's going first?
How long we got to answer is lightning round? Got to be quick. Cara, you go. All right, the most influential gymnast of all time.
I'm definitely going to have to go with, I think I'm going to go with, this is a tough one. This is actually a very, very tough question. It's not lightning. Actually, not lightning.
I know, but I'm lightning round. I'm going to go with Simone Biles. My first instinct had me to say Gabby Douglas but I'm going to say Simone Biles because she kind of also wrote that lightning of Gabby Douglas being very influential and has amplified even more. So, man, I wouldn't say Gabby Douglas but I'm going to stick with Simone Biles because of what she's done, like Gabby Douglas has done and then even taking it to a further level of creating skills, changing the scope of how other people do skills in your teams.
Before seeing everybody to do harder things because she's just doing so much harder. Gymnastics and everyone else. All right. Yes, Simone Biles because of creating skills, winning medals and pretty much being the most dominant in her time right now.
Taki. Easy for me. It's Nadia. Comin' each.
If it wasn't for Nadia scoring the 10 and scoring as many 10s, gymnastics would have never gotten to the point to where it is today. Let's just put this before that, Olympics. People would say overcorbid but if it wasn't for Nadia and making a 10 even possible, then getting people excited about gymnastics, then not as many people would have started doing gymnastics and then it was that combination of her and then the unspoken name, Bella. But if it wasn't for that combination, gymnastics would have never been as big as it is now.
So when it comes to an influence on just everything that moved transpired after that, I would say Nadia. Cody? I'm going to have to say Simone Biles just because for the same reason in today's day and age, I think that she's dominating at such a high level and she's doing things that no woman gymnasts or dominating way that no male gymnasts has ever dominated in the same way to such a degree and such a large margin. And she's all over the news.
She's all over ESPN. Sometimes it's because of the voice she's doing with everything that's happening with the with a with a NASA investigation. But I think more so, it's positive related to how much she dominated the Olympics, how she just dominated the world stage, how she competed with the kidney stone and the noise that it's making on ESPN and other sports outlets or like we've never seen before, I think, unless you were to compare to Nadia and my other instinct was to say not to just say one not to say a person but to say the magnificent seven. That's not a person, but I would say that that had a major influence on the sport as well.
All right. And that wraps up the first episode of the Backflip debates. Round it out our first place winner Cody Trollball with 13 points. Last words, Cody.
I just want to say thanks for having me on here and go Bucks. Oh, he was going to be in a playoff. Kerry last words. Oh, he's going to lose to Texas.
Yeah. I'd say no, I was great. I think we definitely need to continue this and coming for the coming for the points next time guys, not holding back. All right.
I'm in that Robin backflip debates only on gymnastics, Bill. We'll see you next time.