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P&G Champs Day Three: Simone Biles Is The New National Champions

The Final Night of the P&G Championships crowned a new victor. Simone Biles managed to keep her lead over Kyla Ross and win her first national title as a senior.

A close competition, Simone won with two night total of 120.450 to Kyla Ross's  120.250, both women performed with all they had, but it came down to a couple of arm swings on the beam.

 Simone started on the balance beam and kept her cool, showing her strong, powerful tumbling skills, dismounting again with her full in back out dismount and only landing with a slight hop on the landing. Kyla again started on floor exercise, coming out with red lipstick and her hair tied up with a red hair tie. She scored a 14.5 with a start value of 15.7.



On the uneven bars, Peyton Ernst started out with a beautiful jaeger, lovely handstands, but hit her feet on the low bar, but managed to finish with 13.850.

MyKayla Skinner was the most improved, she had a great routine on the balance beam. Showing off her back-handspring to full twisting back tuck a skill she's struggled on in the past couple of weeks. She  stuck it cold and kept right on going, showing great improvement on her extension in her splits and her leaps. Overall, she showed huge improvements in her execution as well as her confidence levels. On the floor exercise, she stuck her double double layout and landed in bounds and did it the best I've seen her do it (this year). She received a 15 on the floor.


McKayla Maroney started her night on the floor exercise where she's really gunning for a world medal with the vault. She did her super high and straight double layout. Her new routine has a lot of, let's say rump shaking. She's older now, (she'll be 18 in December, so it seems like she's trying to show everyone she is a woman instead of a little girl. She stuck her double pike dismount and received a 15.250 out of a 16.1 start value. Nice to see the judges giving higher execution scores.


Elizabeth Price started on the uneven bars, as she was only doing two events again. She started off on the low bar with Weiler kips (50 shades of Jordyn Wieber) and connected two piked Tkatchevs and dismounted with a full twisting double layout and only had a small hop on the landing. Ebee scored a 14.8 out of a 16.3 start value. It's a good move on her part to focus on the uneven bars since the US is notoriously weak on the uneven bars. If she is selected for the World team, she'd be a strong contender for a bars final. On the vault, Ebee did a beautiful and high double twisting Yurchenko, scoring a 15.150 out of a 15.8 start value.



In the all-around, Simone kept her lead going with a 14.950 on the floor with a tenth deduction for out of bounds on her first tumbling pass, a double double tuck (Silvas). Although, she landed and hopped back, she stood on the balls of her feet and her heels did not in fact touch the white boundary, but whatever, the judges decided to be über picky and deduct her, no hard feelings.

Kyla went to the vault and did a glorious DTY. Again, textbook perfect, perfect form in the air, no bent arms, toes pointed, extended and stuck cold. She scored a 15.3 out of 15.8.

McKayla Maroney did her Amanar and NBC compared her again to Kohei Uchimura. In other news, in Japan, Uchimura was fuming after being compared to a girl...and losing. Perfect as always, only a small hop on the landing. 16.0 out of 16.3. Next, she did her Mustafina vault, which she took a good hop forward on, receiving a 15.4 out of a max of 16.

Peyton Ernst went to the balance beam and showed a little Kim Zmeskal, with beautiful extension and great skills, she performed two back-handspring step-out to layout step out and a front tuck to an immediate wolf jump. She missed a switch ring leap but repeated the element and hit it and finished with a double back tuck. She scored a 14.9 out of a possible 16.3, a 1.2 point improvement over her night one score and she got a .2 bump in start value, from a 6.1 to a 6.3.

Simone went to vault and completed an Amanar and scored a 15.8 after a large hop on the landing. Second vault, round off half on with half off, worth 15.6, and received a 15.15.

Kyla went to the uneven bars and had another beautiful routine and received a 15.45, the highest bar score.

MyKayla Skinner did her Cheng vault, receiving a 14.9 and a double twisting Yurchenko with a 14.6.

On the uneven bars, Brenna Dowell did her Tweddle release after a combination of Church (piked toe on Tkatchev) releases, but missed the connection on a bail to handstand, but finished with a lovely full twisting double layout. She lost .1 in start value from night one with a 14.350 out of 15.9, down from 16.

The last rotation, Kyla went to the beam and Simone went to the uneven bars. After making a mistake on a pike circle to handstand (her feet slid off the bar on the way to the handstand), she received a 14.2, leaving the door open for Kyla. To win, Kyla would need to score a 15.55. For a while, she looked like she might be able to do that, but she lost her balance on her side somi and had to swing her arms a couple times to regain balance. She scored a 15.45. She did receive a two tenth bump in start value and she showed a beautiful side aerial connection that could rival Danusia Francis.



Kyla did top the events on balance beam and uneven bars, while Simone received a silver medal on every event. How's that for consistency?

Lexie Priessman and Madison Kocian were named to the national team despite withdrawing from the meet due to injuries. The national team will meet in Texas in two weeks for a training camp. At that point, the selection committee (Martha Karolyi) will decide who makes the Worlds team.

The 2013-2014 National Team:
Simone Biles
Brenna Dowell
Kyla Ross
Maggie Nichols
McKayla Maroney
Kennedy Baker 
Peyton Ernst
Madison Kocian
Elizabeth Price 
Lexie Priessman 
MyKayla Skinner





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