MeetScoresOnline (MSO) now has embedded YouTube video links to complement their online scores.  This new free service of connecting gymnastics scores to videos is an exciting development which could take MSO to the next level of being the major gymnastics portal.  MSO’s founder, Karl Stubsjoen, is looking for advocates to get the word out.

Click here to see what it looks like.

Stubsjoen is excited about all the benefits of providing video links.  Judges could visit the site to practice judging, and as MSO’s archive of scores and video links grows, college coaches could find it a valuable tool to evaluate talent.  The biggest benefit of all, of course, is allowing the families, friends and fans of gymnasts to see a lot more than just the scores.

More and more gymnastics sites are capitalizing on the growing popularity of social networking and videos.  One site in particular, Gymnastike , has compiled an amazing number of high quality videos capturing routines, training sessions and interviews.  With embedded video links connected to scores, MSO is banking on the social networking phenomenon to help propel this new service.

The process to upload the videos is simple.  For those interested in linking a particular gymnast’s scores to YouTube videos, simply provide MSO with the object embed code for the video and then locate that gymnast’s scores on MSO.  According to Stubsjoen, gymnasts and their parents will soon be able to upload the video links themselves.

With the advent of connecting scores to videos, it should strengthen the argument for establishing a centralized archive for gymnastics scores.  Advocates will be working with the nine USAG regions to get them all onboard.  With MSO’s growing popularity, it would make sense to allow MSO to be that central repository.  Uploading scores to MSO is easy and can be done in real time at the time of a meet.

Obviously not all gyms and organizations post their scores on MSO, and thus searching for those scores is arcane and agonizing.  Worse still: often the sites that post those scores go dormant after a period of time.  Those scores are lost forever!  Searching for gymnastics scores should be easy.  With a nationally-recognized system for centralized scoring, that search would be as simple as a forward roll.