My USA’s World Championship Team 2015

My USA’s World Championship Team 2015

I’ve made this team using just this year’s results as in my opinion you should make the world team on your most recent performances. However I do not think this is the team Marta will take to Glasgow. Personally I think this is the team that would get the US the most medals and give some of the gymnast on the team valuable experience on competing at the world stage.  

Simone Biles

Do you even need to question why she’s made this team?

Extraordinary difficulty and perfectly executed skills. I wouldn’t like to use her on all four events if I could help it maybe take her off bars. But she definitely could contribute on all four apparatus, plus probably qualifying and medalling in the vault, beam and floor finals.

Aly Raisman

So far Aly’s comeback has been pretty good. She’s showing good consistency and her difficulty is second to Simone’s in all the apparatus except bars. Aly has tons of experience and you could definitely use her on floor and beam where she could probably make the finals - I wouldn’t count Aly out of making the All-around either. 

Bailie Key

Some may consider it a risk to take Bailie to Glasgow… A first year senior, no experience at the world stage so you wouldn’t know how she’d perform under high pressure. However her senior year is looking extremely good. Bailie came 2^nd in Jeslo- Beating Gabby and Aly! Where she then continued to placing 4^th in the P&G’s beating Gabby again! In this team you could definitely use Bailie on bars where she came third at the recent P&G’s and I would put her on floor in replace of Skinner (Bailie was only 0.1 behind). Plus you never know she might surprise us and make the All-around as well. This will give her valuable experience also.

Maggie Nichols

Maggie has always been up there in the top 3 at the US but similarly to Bailie she has no world experience. Maggie is coming on leaps and bounds this year and looks like a totally different gymnast. I’d definitely use Maggie on Vault instead of Aly- her Amanar is cleaner and less scary looking also on beam. If Maggie does keep on improving the way she is doing this year having this experience in Glasgow would definitely up her chance for making the Olympic team. 

Madison Kocian

I had an inner battle between Madison and Ashton for this team; as much as I love Ashton’s bar routine and her execution she has hardly competed this year-only just appearing at the P&Gs. However, Madison has the 2nd highest difficulty on bars (behind Brenna Dowell) and she came 1^st on this event at the P&Gs. Madison could even make the bar final. If anything does happen to any of the other team members Madison has pretty decent scores on all four events as well. Plus she has previous world experience.

Mckayla Skinner

Personally I’m not a big fan of Mckayla’s gymnastics I think she relies too much on her difficulty and needs to work more on her execution; but I do think she is improving and a lot of people are too hard on her. In saying that I would only use her on vault as she does get high scores and she is likely to make the vault final where she has medalled in previous world championships.

I do realise I have missed some pretty major names out of this list such as Gabby and Kyla, but in all honestly I don’t think either them are ready for this championships. Gabby is still quite inconsistent - her floor routine has high difficulty but it’s only high if she hits the many difficult spins and her bars is pretty high but she wouldn’t contribute as much as Bailie and Madison (yet). Don’t get me wrong I think Gabby’s comeback has been very good and I would love to see her in the Olympic team next year… I would use her as an alternate though with the other alternate been Alyssa.

As much as I love Kyla’s gymnastics and I absolutely adore her execution she can’t keep up with the other girl’s difficulty. She hasn’t upgraded her routines from 2012- her bars score has gone down by 0.4! If she was in the team you’d use Kyla in bars and beam but the US now have some bar specialist which they can afford to place in teams leaving Kyla with just beam. However you can always rely on Kyla for her consistency but from this year she has had a lot of up and downs. But I can’t see Marta taking a team to Glasgow without Gabby or Kyla.