2023 Pac-12 Depth Charts & Roster Moves – The Balance Beam Situation

Following the look at the SEC‘s movers and shakers in the roster department, let’s check in with the Pac-12, where we have a few teams with some pretty major turnover from last year’s postseason lineups.

It’s a very manageable number of routines that Utah has to replace, with 21 of 24 sets from the national championship returning, though there is the crucial Soloski floor 9.950 that will need to come from somewhere else this time around. The first-year class is small, but it does include Makenna Smith, whose L10 work gives some Merrell-Giles vibes overall and is mostly here to shore up a semi-depleted vault lineup with her Omelianchik. Most significant in Utah’s quest not to drop tenths from last season, however, will be getting solid mid-lineup routines from transfer Abby Brenner on all three of her apparatuses, as well as more events from Kara Eaker in a healthy season, even though they got her main one—beam—when it mattered in 2022.

Cal has a task ahead of itself in trying to make up for just how many absolutely essential routines are not on the squad anymore—though did have some practice for it last season what with George being injured, and Watterson being out on bars, and Schank getting hurt toward the end. Cal ends up having to replace 9 of the 24 routines from the regional final, which is a lot, but not an entire team. Which it could have been. The path to keeping up a top-10+ level this season primarily includes a starring role for 9.950s on multiple events from eMjae Frazier, but also requires a major contribution from all-around possibilities Miki Aderinto and Georgia-Rose Casey Brown, the ninja L10s who both had extremely successful championship seasons this year across the events.

UCLA is also losing a fair chunk of important quality with 7-9 of their best-lineup routines from last season departing (depending on who was available that day), but this remains a roster that has more than enough pieces and more than enough talent to be a top-4 team. Just like it was theoretically last year. Selena Harris comes in as one of the best L10 athletes in the country and Ciena Alipio should be a beam + TBD others type, which starts to make up for last season’s losses pretty well. Still, UCLA will need more than that to get back to where they should be, so they’ll also be looking for an Emily Lee season as well as generally more comfort and consistency from the sophomores, which remains one of the most talented classes in UCLA history but hasn’t fully delivered on that yet.

Everyone has their fiercest opera glasses out to see what Stanford gets up to because here we have a team that majorly outperformed expectations last year to finish 14th after basically not even having a season the year before, has also lost a ton of its most important routines from 2022 (including 11 of the 24 routines from the regional final), but then also has one of the most interesting and potentially influential first-year classes in the country. This is a first-year class that could make up for all 11 lost routines, what with Roberts, Dean, and Nguyen being top L10s and Sorrento coming in to Canada all about. But the pressure will be on them to hit the ground running because looking only at what Stanford got from the sophomore-junior-senior gymnasts last year, the team would be very light. 

Oregon State will certainly miss Kaitlyn Yanish (and the team’s main score-replacement concern will be that floor routine), but last year’s departures hardly constitute an excessive loss of routines for this young team—and having Madi Dagen back for another year is critical for continuing the upward trajectory started last season. While bars showed a few more signs of life in 2022, it was still OSU’s rough event, and this year’s first-year class represents an extreme case of recruiting for the weakness. This is a deeply bars class that should revamp that lineup.

Somewhat similarly to Oregon State, Washington has lost a gymnast who was a critical piece through good times and bad in Geneva Thompson but is not losing enough routines to need to do a full rebuild of the path established last season. We actually haven’t seen Washington bring in a new class with this many sheer numbers, possible routines, and warm bodies in a good while, so that bodes fairly well for their chances to construct some more competitive routines, especially if last season’s drastic improvements from returning gymnasts were any indication.

Arizona State will like its chances for upgrade in 2023 since the routine losses from last season are pretty minimal (21 of 24 routines from regionals return), and there are a few injury returns that would almost entirely mitigate that loss even before the first-year class is factored in with the potential all-around contribution from Kimberly Smith.

Arizona loses the fewest routines of any team in the Pac-12, just a single bars set from last year’s regionals lineup, which is exactly what they needed after finishing last in the conference. The 2023 season should be almost entirely about adding and very little about subtracting as Arizona tries to close the gap on the rest of the teams.