Illinois head coach Justin Spring is trying to change 100 years of NCAA men’s gymnastics.

Spring proposed the new head-to-head format to the NCAA the day before team finals at last season’s NCAA Championships. His hope was to gain interest from coaches across the country and get the approval to run a trial meet. Conquering both goals allowed a trial meet to be scheduled for Friday night at Huff Hall against Minnesota.

“When audience members feel the need to bring a calculator to follow the progression of our competitions, we have a serious problem,” Spring said. “That is what we are trying to get rid of.”

The new format will place both teams on the same event at the same time. A team member from Minnesota will compete on the event, immediately followed by a member of the Illini. Whoever receives the higher score will earn a single point for their team. The audience will no longer be told what scores were given, only who won the head-to-head match. Spring chose Minnesota as the competitor for the trial run meet because of the enthusiasm from its coach.

“Mike Burns is the head of our collegiate gymnastics association,” he said. “I spent a lot of time talking with him, and he is all about it. He is one of the most passionate ones aside from myself … and he loves it. We’ve been in communication all along, kind of been building up to this point and we are both very excited about it.”

After the five-up, five-count format change last weekend, the Illini had to change their practice routine again in preparation for this weekend’s changes.

“We ran our practices just as the meet would be,” Spring said. “(Assistant head coach Daniel Ribeiro) wrote up an equation in an excel spread sheet with the outline of the Minnesota guys expected lineups, attributing scores to a 10 percent chance of a fall and he hits this function, which spits out a random score that is about right. Our guys did not have a good day in the gym, so in our simulation Minnesota beat us.”

One of the most difficult things the new format proposes is spontaneity. There are no set-in-stone lineups. Each team will put up the gymnast with the most potential to win against the competitor. This has been a struggle for the Illini during the simulation practice.

“The new format has a lot more of being ready on the go,” sophomore Josh Wilson said. “You never know who’s going to go next because when the other person throws up someone, then you have to throw up who you think will be able to beat them by the smallest margin because you don’t want to waste your best guys on the easiest competitors. You have to be ready on the fly.”

Spring’s passion for the new format has flooded over to the Illini.

“It’s added a lot of conversations to our team talks in the beginning of our practice,” freshman Joey Peters said. “He just goes on and on about how awesome this new system is. We are trying to change gymnastics for the public because what’s going on right now isn’t working.”

The meet will be recorded by the Big Ten Network to attract viewers around the country. This will be the first step in changing men’s gymnastics, but no definite decisions will rest on the outcome of the meet.

“If this isn’t what people want, then back to the drawing board,” Spring said. “At least we are moving into some direction of making our sport more appealing to the average fan. I think we need to do that. It’s not the 1960s anymore where gymnastics was all powerful. We need to make some changes and we need to be progressive. If it’s this, and we all think it is, then great and I’m going to push for it. I hope some change comes from this.”

Gina can be reached at [email protected] and @muelle30