After watching the above video previewing the girls’ gymnastics team’s upcoming season with senior captains Alexa Rhynd and Kalena Wang, read below for the rules of the game.
Rules of the Game: Gymnastics
by Jake Freudberg
Sports Reporter
The four events in girls’ gymnastics are floor, vault, beam, and uneven bars. In boys’ gymnastics meets, the six events are vault, still rings, high bars, floor exercise, and pommel horse.
At meets, which are between two or more schools, gymnasts do a unique routine on a given event and then are given a score out of ten by a judge. When the judge is scoring the routine, the starting value from which the judge deducts points from is not always ten – it varies depending on the level of difficulty.
Up to six gymnasts may compete on each event, and the sum of the top four scores from each event is the team score. The only rule regarding gymnast participation is no more than two gymnasts may compete in all four events.
Gymnastics is unique in that to qualify for the postseason, wins and losses really don’t matter, rather the teams with highest averages of their four highest scoring meets qualify for postseason competition.
Newton South has its own girls’ gymnastics team, while the boys’ team is combined with Newton North. The boys’ team won the Mass. state championship last season.
