If there’s one word to describe the 2024 NCAA gymnastics regional championships that took place earlier this month, it’s “upset.” If there’s one to describe Thursday’s semifinal round at the NCAA championships, it’s “chaos.”
The first session mostly followed the script—with LSU and California moving on to the final with a bevy of accolades in tow—save for an unexpectedly compelling performance from an upstart Cardinal team. Stanford entered the postseason an unseeded No. 19 in the national rankings, an impressive feat in and of itself considering it fell as low as No. 52 during the regular season and didn’t crack the top 36 until week six. The Cardinal leaves Fort Worth ranked fifth while sophomore Anna Roberts set a career-high 39.6375 to finish fourth in the all around and claim first on vault, the program’s first national title since fan-favorite Elizabeth “Ebee” Price took top honors on floor in 2018.
“We feel like the story of the season for us has been one of resilience and just keeping our heads down, staying true to the vision, and continuing to do the work, even though we encountered some challenges and some obstacles at the beginning,” said seventh-year head coach Tabitha Yim, a Stanford gymnastics alumna and 14-time former All-American in her own right.
Though she’s previously coached individual athletes—including Price, Kyla Bryant, and now-fifth-year Chloe Widner—to NCAA championships, this was Yim’s first trip back with the full team. “[Our staff and team] are competitive. We want to be in the mix, we want to be in the hunt. There’s just something really special about being on the [postseason] floor under the bright lights on the biggest stage,” said Yim.
She calls this particular team and nationals experience “just so much fun” and credits “that extra bit of strength, that kind of X Factor,” which allowed them to brush off the nerves and stay within four tenths of qualifier California for the entirety of the meet. “[The semifinal] was nothing—we’ve been through so much worse! Nothing can faze us at this point… As hard as it was, I think [our earlier struggles] truly prepared us to be able to go out there, face these moments, and just be normal.”
Spirits were high for competitors and fans alike after session one, as were the expectations of an equally thrilling evening session featuring four of the only seven teams ever to win an NCAA women’s gymnastics championship. The Sooners—gunning for their third consecutive title—were primed to smash records and make history, just as they’d done all season long. This semifinal round was expected to be a three-way race for third featuring No. 4 Florida, No. 5 Utah, and No. 8 Alabama.
In the two-minute touch warm-up, the top-ranked Sooners looked exactly how you would expect the No. 1 vault lineup in the country to look at NCAA championships, punctuated by sophomore standout Faith Torrez’s perfectly controlled Yurchenko one and a half landed like a dart.
A little over a minute later, those high expectations came crashing down, literally: Torrez launched another dynamic vault into the air, flared out her arms in anticipation of the stick, and promptly sat down. Initial confusion quickly gave way to stunned silence as fans realized that it was not another warm-up but a competition vault.
Freshman Keira Wells followed with a decidedly more “Sooner” offering that seemingly confirmed Torrez’s fall was just a fluke and that the ship would surely right itself. Third up, Jordan Bowers’ Yurchenko one and a half looked flawless as ever in the air but landed so deeply that she needed several steps to avoid falling. Then, regular season All-American Katherine LeVasseur made a nearly identical mistake; though neither she nor Bowers actually fell, they accrued enough deductions on the landings that they may as well have. Oklahoma would be counting at least two scores under 9.500.
At this point, comparisons to the notorious 2000 Sydney Olympics all around final were inevitable, reinforced by vault coach Lou Ball assessing the mats and equipment as a visibly stunned Oklahoma corral looked on. They closed out the rotation with safe but serviceable efforts from Hannah Scheible and last-minute sub Audrey Davis, but the damage was done.
When the team rallied with an exemplary bars rotation in which they dropped a 9.850, juxtaposed with Alabama counting three falls on beam and Utah dropping an early-lineup fall of its own on floor, it seemed that maybe, just maybe, Oklahoma would pull one more miraculous performance out of its hat this season.
Two more falls on beam during the third rotation put any lingering hopes to rest.
What was expected to be a battle for the second place berth ended with perennial podium finishers Utah and Florida advancing to Saturday’s final, leaving Oklahoma on the outside looking in. Though far from the first shocking development of this postseason, it was certainly the most unexpected.
In a post-meet interview with ESPN’s Taylor Davis, head coach KJ Kindler said, “It wasn’t as we’d scripted it, but this team has taken great pride in winning, and we’re going to take great pride in losing.” She emphasized that, despite the immense success her gymnasts have achieved this season, “the Sooners are human. We have lived in the luxury of success for over a decade—and we have certainly worked for it—but on any given day, anything can happen.”
Though the Sooners largely took themselves out of contention, both the Gators and Red Rocks still had to overcome falls of their own to put up the scores necessary to advance.
Florida head coach Jenny Rowland was visibly “inspired and in awe” of what her freshman-heavy team accomplished, particularly under such precipitous circumstances.
“Truly, this team has grown up in front of our eyes this season,” said Rowland. “It’s been a dream come true as a coach to see a very young group of young women collectively come together and have the poise to build their confidence throughout a season and be able to continue to do what they do.”
With her trademark equanimity, freshman Anya Pilgrim ignored the fray by focusing on her own gymnastics. “Personally, [whatever is happening elsewhere in the competition] is none of my business. I can only control what I do.” The method clearly works, as Pilgrim delivered a clutch 9.900 on bars immediately following a fall.
Likewise, junior Leanne Wong—who claimed a trio of second-place finishes Thursday evening—invoked one of Rowland’s mantras to rise above the surrounding chaos. “I did kind of hear the crowd and kind of could tell mistakes were happening, but Jenny always tells us to ‘control the controllable,’ so we stayed focused on the Gators.”
“I think I’m still wrapping my head around it,” said first-year Utah head coach Carly Dockendorff. “We came out really aggressive and dynamic, and we knew that’s what we needed to do all the way through floor.” She credits the team’s ability to focus and stay in the moment for allowing them to move past Thursday’s errors relatively unscathed, a sentiment shared by last year’s NCAA all around champion Maile O’Keefe.
“During the rotation, it’s all Utah,” O’Keefe said. “It’s definitely hard when you’re rotating to stay locked in because you want to know what your score was, too, and everything’s just right there in front of you.”
“We have what we call the ‘Utah Bubble,’ and we try to stay within that,” echoed Abby Paulson. “If you see somebody wandering, it’s your job to kind of be like, ‘All right, let’s focus on us and our team.’”
O’Keefe and Paulson—arguably the most formidable one-two punch of any recent NCAA beam lineup—each earned a share of second place on their signature event, while O’Keefe also claimed second on floor.
Every team in Saturday’s final has, at some point, imagined what a final without Oklahoma would look like and the opportunity it would present. Now we all get to see who can capitalize on this once-in-an-era chance.
READ THIS NEXT: LIVE BLOG: 2024 NCAA Semifinal Two
Article by Claire Billman
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