2023 SEC Depth Charts and Roster Moves – The Balance Beam Situation

We’re slightly more than a month out from the season now, so it’s a good time to familiarize ourselves (and by ourselves I mean me) with what has changed on each team since the last time we saw them back in April. Do they have a new haircut? A weird boyfriend? A sudden baby? All of the above? 

Florida has lost exactly 1/3 of its routines from the national championship last year, including half the floor lineup. It’s a significant enough exodus that on pure graduation-to-first-year turnover, Florida is losing routines. Kayla DiCello isn’t three people. But when you add DiCello’s all-around to the injury returns of Morgan Hurd and Ellie Lazzari, as well as the Georgia transfers Victoria Nguyen and Baumann The Younger, Florida will hope to have enough to keep pace with the lost routines. Baumann and Nguyen will not be called upon to compete as much for Florida as they did for Georgia, but they should contend for plenty of lineups. Especially given the leg-injury history on this roster, Baumann’s floor looks particularly useful.

Drew Watson is the major loss from last season, but other than that, Auburn has Suni locked in for a second and final year and will return 22 of 24 routines from the national championship. With first-year standout Olivia Greaves already sidelined for the season, there’s very little lineup turnover expected here.

Missouri’s only roster loss from last season is the transfer of Gatzendorfer to Maryland, and since she was not in final lineups, all 24 of Missouri’s postseason routines from 2022 return. So, again, we’re going to see quite a bit of lineup consistency between 2022 and 2023 for a team that had its best year ever in 2022. So why not? Missouri’s top first-year gymnast this season is Addison Lawrence from GAGE who took 3rd on floor in Senior F at L10 nationals in the spring and also brings the potential for a Y1.5.

First off, Alabama has some important routines to replace this year, especially on vault and floor, with a few of the top options Lexi Grabers going bye bye. But there is the opportunity here for even more changeover than what is absolutely required with a first-year class that has the new most people capable of contributing real-life lineup routines of any team in the top 20-ish, led by Karis German and Gabby Gladieux (who won Senior D this year), both of whom we should expect to see a lot. Those returning gymnasts who are 4th, 5th, 6th on events may be pushed out by shinier new toys.

Like Alabama, Kentucky has also lost exactly 1/4 of its final lineups from last season, which means every lineup is going to feel at least a bit of a pinch. Kentucky will expect to get events here and there from the first-year class to rebuild each six (they’ll want to see Bourque in several lineups), though the most important addition may be getting Bailey Bunn back from injury. 

Arkansas has lost among the most routines of anyone in the conference with 9 of 24 (37.5%) lineup sets from the regional final no longer with the team. That’s a big reason the transfer of Norah Flatley could end up being so important for Arkansas. She showed last season with UCLA that she still has top-level all-around, and Arkansas needs routines from her and Frankie Price returning from injury—in addition to the potential bars reset to be delivered by first-year AA contenders Pratt and Swaney—to envision improvement over 2022’s finish.

LSU is among the teams that could be in danger of losing more than it is gaining this year because of how many different 1-2 event necessities graduated after last season. At the same time, the baseline replacement of 6/24 postseason routines is about what you expect to have to do each year and should be manageable. Bryce Wilson has been one of the top VT/FX gymnasts in the Devo/Nastia Cup world for years, Cammy Hall is coming in to vault, and LSU will also want to get at least a bars routine from Ashley Cowan (she’s also a lovely twister on floor) and will hope that Annie Beard can overcome her Texas Dreams injury heritage to at least provide a lineup beam, if not also have a Grace Quinn-type career floor trajectory.  

That large boom you heard in the background was the sound of Kupets blowing up last year’s roster and starting from scratch. You can’t say she didn’t go to work after surviving the axe. No team will look more different in 2023 than Georgia, with 16 of the 24 routines from regionals last year now gone. The parade of newcomers is in some respects a case of trying to throw walk-ons at the problem to see if a routine or two sticks (and there should be at least a couple), but JaFree Scott could be a game changer for this team in terms of Georgia actually getting one of the nation’s most exciting recruits again. Plus, the transfers will be critical. Josie Angeny is even more essential on all her events now than she was for Kentucky, but I’m most interested to see what happens with Vanessa Deniz in a different…team-depth environment. There were definitely times when she was sitting on the bench casually 9.850ing to herself just because that wasn’t making the Oklahoma lineup, but Georgia would kill for it.