Mizzou Gym ready, prepared for 2025 season

The final intrasquad showed off the Tigers’ immense depth, making those lineup decisions that much harder

Welcome back! Gymnastics season starts THIS WEEK, and I, for one, am excited. This will be my last check-in before previews and my regular season coverage begins. The holiday season slowed me up on getting this out, so thank you for waiting patiently! You can read my prior observational pieces from the team’s other two intrasquad meets here AND here.

For those of us lucky to be in town for this one, in the morning hours of December 18, we were treated to a full-scale production of Mizzou Gymnastics, complete with inflatable tiger head entrance, music, smoke, Truman, cheerleaders, and graphics on the jumbotron. It was a delight to watch 50 — FIFTY!!! — routines on display and at the conclusion of the meet, all I could think was, HOW is this coaching staff going to figure out lineups?! But for real… how?! I do not envy them.

Let’s get into it.

VAULT

I will confess, I was not in the best spot to see the vaults themselves, but head coach Shannon Welker said afterwards via email that they had three solid sticks (out of 14) and showcased 10.0 start value vaults from six (!)Tigers— Hannah Horton, Jocelyn Moore, Amari Celestine, Elise Tisler, Kaia Tanskanen and a new entrant— Railey Jackson.

“Railey was little short on hers, but she has been looking really good there and confident that will be a big one for us,” Shannon said.

Both Railey and Amari fell on their landings (they were a bit underrotated) and obviously they’re going for more sticks moving forward, but overall, a pretty good performance on vault. I came away super impressed with Kyra Burns’ 9.90 (ties her career-best), who I think that despite performing a Yurchenko Full (9.95 SV) will find herself in the starting lineup at least at the beginning of the season, and I also loved Abby (9.85 YF) and Jessa’s vaults (also a 9.85 YF; more on Jessa later) and will be adding them to my alternates list of those who may squeak into a rotation this season. Ultimately, I think that the Tigers will want to send a lineup full of awesome, fully-formed 10.0 SV value vaults 1-6 to maximize scores week in and week out in SEC meets, which start week 3.

If you take just the five highest scores from the above chart, this works out to be a 49.3 rotation score**. **Obviously, Amari is in the rotation and that score, which was a 9.15, would be dropped as the sixth score, so this is not an exact representation.

You can watch Kyra’s vault in the first video. I think hers might be the ONLY vault video I captured that day.

BARS

I was in a significantly better position to see the bars workers, and in the first rotation especially — featuring Addi Lawrence, Jocelyn Moore, Hannah Horton, Amari Celestine, Kyra Burns & Mara Titarsolej — the Tigers stuck 5/6 landings, which is incredible so early on.

If you piece together the top five scores from the above chart, you come up with a 49.25 rotation score, which appears pretty accurate, and is pretty solid for mid-December, I think.

Talking with Associate Head Coach/bars coach Whitney Snowden via email afterwards, she said, “I was so incredibly proud of how the Bars squad showed up! We talk a lot about staying calm under pressure and taking each skill one at a time. Bars is an event where rhythm really matters, and if you work against the bounce of the bar, it can make the routine much more challenging. Our Tigers are working to swing bars, and not just use their strength to produce routines.”

While the scores were a bit on the low side — there was a bit of discrepancy in determining proper start values — after sending video of the routines to my gym colleague Claire, she said it seemed likely these were Level 10 judges and took deductions for mistakes that NCAA doesn’t normally take off for (like bent arms). The good news is things she observed like overly aggressive handstands is what you WANT to see right now. That, and some of the athletes didn’t start from 10.0 SV, like Olivia Kelly, whose dismount was apparently downgraded. (I really could have used Nate Salsman there to keep me attuned to this, ha.)

“Moving forward we will continue to tighten up body positions on handstands and foot form throughout the releases and transitions,” Whitney said. “Overall, our energy stayed up and I was pleased with their performances! Next up, Beauty and the Beast!”

BEAM

The #BeamTeam is back! While I didn’t hear back from beam coach Lacey Rubin on her thoughts from the intrasquad, I was I-M-P-R-E-S-S-E-D. Four — count ‘em, 4!!!! — 9.90 scores! Kennedy recorded her highest ever score, perhaps cementing her place in the beam rotation, and three other Tigers, Helen Hu, Lauren Macpherson and Jessa Conedera, also posted 9.90 scores. A quartet of Tigers, including two freshmen, scored 9.80 scores. It was fantastic to see so much success up and down the lineup.

If you take into account the five highest scores from above, beam earned a 49.40, which is a really good score, and one that I’m not sure the Tigers hit last season. Y’all, am I excited for beam? (whispers: I think I am excited for beam)

Here are Kennedy (top left) and Lauren’s 9.90 routines (bottom left), and if you go to the thread, you can see Helen’s as well. I actually captured every beam routine on my phone, but didn’t post them all.

FLOOR

When talking with floor coach/choreographer Jackie Terpak over email after the meet, the over-arching feeling was that of pride for the Tigers’ hard work. “I am proud of our Tigers and their commitment to their choreography,” she said. “It’s a continuous process but they trust (it), and their performance level is going to continue to progress.”

Jackie choreographed 14 (FOURTEEN!) new floor routines this fall and is consistently making changes and tweaks. “Everyone is settling into the details; they look good. I even made a few changes the day before Black & Gold,” she said.

While some of the scores seemed a bit on the lower side for the utter fabulousness of the Fab Floor, I came away feeling really good about the many, many, MANY floor routines the Tigers have at their disposal. If you take the five highest scores from above, it equals a 49.35 rotation score, which you’ll rarely (hopefully NEVER) see from the Tigers during the regular season. I was particularly impressed with Jessa’s 9.80— she was incredible this meet — Amari’s near-perfect 9.95, and Railey’s 9.90 Black Swan-themed choreo.

Jackie lauded both the freshmen and transfers for their love of learning and wanting to make sure they look good. “They love to be challenged and they want to look good,” she said. Overall, “From skills to styles and storylines, we (the floor rotation as a whole) have a good variety within our floor team, and I am really excited for everyone to see their routines this season!”

Here’s four of the dozen routines performed for you. I actually have all their routines on video as well, and you can find a few more in the thread.

MVPs

Jessa Conedera

Top billing of MVPs for this meet for sure goes to sophomore Jessa Conedera. The sophomore, who was unable to break into any lineups last season, was on fire at Black & Gold, and could very well find her way into a rotation or two at some point this season. Her 9.90 on beam tied for the team-high, and her 9.85 on vault was stellar. She also had a solid 9.80 on floor.

When I brought up her performance to Shannon after the meet via email, he said, “Jessa gets our first star of the day! So pleased with Jessa’s progress, she earned it with her hard work over the summer,”

Lauren Macpherson

Another great meet for LMac, as I’ve decided to abbreviate her name, who has had a really great string of intrasquad performances.

In the November intrasquad, which was scored (though hard to see), she had a 9.80 on vault and bars and a 9.85 on beam, so she’s improving each time out. This time around, she won the all-around with 39.45 points, earning a 9.90 on beam and a 9.85 on vault, bars, and floor.

Shannon agreed, awarding the second star of the meet to Macpherson. “She was impressive today as well,” he said, “hitting 4/4, sticking a vault and looking sharp on beam!”

Hannah Horton

“Our third star goes to Hannah Horton who put up 3 solid performances and displayed some very clean lines on bars,” Shannon said. I agree with him; the sophomore looked terrific, amassing three 9.85 scores on vault, bars and floor.

Railey Jackson

While not mentioned as one of Shannon’s “stars” of the meet, I want to shout out the five-star freshman, as she was awesome. Despite the fall on vault, I was really impressed with her floor and beam routines, in which she scored a 9.90 and a 9.80, respectively. Shannon talked her up one of the previous meets, and it was great to see her continued progress.

Closing Thoughts

When asked his thoughts about the team’s performance in the final intrasquad, Shannon said, “I was very pleased with our performance, progress, and display of depth today. We clearly have the depth, now we need to continue to build the 9.9+ quality routines. We competed 50 routines and our hit percentage was very high for that many performances.”

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I liked what I saw, but there’s definitely better days ahead for this group. Amari, for example, struggled on two of four apparatuses, and when I ran into her at the merch table at women’s hoops game that night (read Nate’s new article on her burgeoning sports marketing career here), I told her how fun it was and great to see everyone. Her response? “It was…. something,” with a little laugh. I got the distinct impression she wasn’t that happy with some of her routines, but we all know she will be ready to go come Friday.

FRIDAY.

The Tigers’ 2025 season will officially kick off at Mizzou Arena on Friday, January 3 at 6pm with the return of the Beauty & the Beast meet, a collaborative event with Mizzou Wrestling where the teams will share the floor and compete simultaneously. TigerStyle’s opponent is a tough one, Cornell, and Gym’s opponents will be Illinois State, SEMO and Ball State.

On how this meet really kicks off a tough stretch of scheduling, Welker said after the second intrasquad, “We’re excited to do the Beauty and the Beast. From a competitive standpoint, that’s probably the one [meet] that we’ve got a little bit of wiggle room to just kind of get some things squared away. But then it’s, we’re gonna hit it. Because we’re in Denver, and then we go to Oklahoma, and then we’re home vs. Kentucky right after that. And it doesn’t get any easier after that. I think they’re [the meets] all important, honestly. Listen, we want to get wins, but we also have to score high too, right? It’s nice to get the win, but if we don’t achieve certain scoring, it doesn’t help us as much as it could. So they’re all important, in that aspect.”

This team has high aspirations: Finish in the top half of the SEC, reach the evening session of the SEC Championships, return to Nationals as a team. These are not unattainable goals. “We’ve got to push the envelope a little bit,” Welker said back in October.