The Oklahoma Sooners may not have an Olympic medalist on their team, but in gymnastics, stuck landings never go out of style.
The Sooners won their seventh national title at the NCAA gymnastics championships in Fort Worth, Texas, on Saturday. They narrowly edged out the UCLA Bruins, helmed by Olympic gold medalist Jordan Chiles.
Despite an indomitable performance from Chiles and her teammates, the Bruins claimed second place, finishing four tenths of a point behind Oklahoma. Missouri and Utah rounded out the top four.
Oklahoma started their night on the balance beam, where nerves tend to creep in for even the most experienced teams. If they were jittery, it didn’t show — every score the Sooners counted on the beam was a 9.900 or above.
UCLA mirrored Oklahoma’s early momentum, going lights-out on their best event, the floor exercise. Chiles anchored the Bruins with a near-perfect 9.975, tying Oklahoma after the first rotation.
Five Olympians competed in Saturday’s final, including Chiles and her 2021 Olympic teammate Grace McCallum (Utah), Team Canada’s Brooklyn Moors (UCLA) and Olympic bronze medalist Amelie Morgan of Great Britain (Utah).
In the second and third rotations, Oklahoma accumulated a healthy buffer over the rest of the field. A hungry beam rotation from UCLA led to a tight race, but Oklahoma clinched the win with a stellar final rotation on the uneven bars.
“Truly a fairytale ending,” Oklahoma’s Jordan Bowers said on the ABC broadcast. “Obviously, last year was a tough loss, but you have to grow from it and we have learned so much this season … This little girl when I was 13 committed here and I dreamed of moments like these.”
Bowers also claimed the individual all-around title in Thursday’s competition.
The biggest shock of the night came in the second rotation, when McCallum fell off the balance beam. The uncharacteristic error hampered the Utes’ quest to win their first national championship since 1995.
Defending champion and No. 1 seed LSU failed to advance out of Thursday’s semifinal, trailing UCLA and Utah. Missouri earned their first berth to the final in program history after a clutch beam routine from 5th-year Helen Hu, who also won the individual national title in that event. LSU’s freshman star Kailin Chio claimed the vault title and Chiles won the uneven bars, while her teammate Brooklyn Moors took home the floor exercise title.
Chiles became the first Bruin to win two uneven bars national titles. Her Olympic teammate Jade Carey (Oregon State) was close to tying Bowers for the all-around title, but an imperfect landing on the vault kept her in fourth place.
This year’s field offered one of the closest match-ups in recent years, with LSU missing the final four by two tenths of a point — a stuck landing away from advancing.
