At level eight, either a pirouette/180 long angle turn or a release move is required. The vast majority of kids do a pirouette, but we saw two bails at state and a couple of toe shoots (that toe on low bar shoot to high bar thingy). The release moves we saw weren't very good and in weak bar routines so I can only assume that these kids weren't able to get a pirouette?
At level eight we definitely saw that bars is a weak spot for many kids, even a few that were superstars at level 7. It's a little surprising because it doesn't seem like that big of a jump, but our coach always says that bars is where a lot of kids lose their momentum at this stage. Bars is really hard and totally different than the other events. I think coaching totally comes into play at this point as well. Some gyms seem to have strong bar workers across the board and some not so much. I can only imagine that compounds at level nine where things really start to get hard.
Oops sorry, went off on a tangent there.