Bermuda?s top gymnasts will be venturing into the unknown when they head to Melbourne for the Commonwealth Games.

A new scoring system for all events has recently been introduced and national coach Tina Williams admitted yesterday that she had no idea how well her girls would adapt to the new format.

Casey Lopes, Kalena Astwood, Caitlin Mello, Kaisey Griffith and Hannah King make up the Island?s five-strong gymnastics team who will compete on the bars, beam, vault and floor.

The three highest scores in each discipline count towards the overall team score while the top 24 girls go through to the individual finals.

?The scoring system which will be in place down in Melbourne is brand new and none of the girls have ever come across it before,? said Williams.

?There was quite a lot of controversy at the last Olympics over the scoring system and it was decided that it needed to be changed.

?So to a certain extent it is difficult to predict how well we?re going to do at the Games. But the girls have been working really hard on their skills and have been practising putting them into a full routine.

?There are quite a few new skills that have been introduced and while practising them on their own is one thing, putting them all together into a routine which is going to score well is another matter entirely.

?But the girls have been getting ready for the Games for close to 12 months now and as far as I?m concerned they are as well prepared as they could be. Training for such a big event requires a huge amount of work on things like strength, flexibility and the mental side and they have all been very disciplined.

?We are getting down there nine days before the competition begins (on March 17) so that we can properly prepare and acclimatise and give ourselves time to settle down.

Even under this new code we know that were will probably not be able to compete with some of the larger countries but we?re all hoping that we can more than hold our own in competition with some of the smaller ones.?