Some of the best teams in the country had a great weekend. Some of them did not. We’re approaching the time of year where that sort of thing starts to actually matter. Welcome to midseason.
Question: Has Oklahoma figured itself out fully now?
Two 198s in a weekend is never a bad result. Asserting yourself like that when so many other top teams were having a weird one definitely advances your claim to outright best-team-in-the-country status.
I can’t speak much to the Metroplex result, due to that meet existing in a pocket of unreality inaccessible by normal mortal means. But we can, at this point, declare that the Oklahoma freshman class is fulfilling the prophecy. Mackenzie Estep getting the season’s first freshman 10.0 feels so right. Faith Torrez returning on vault is so exciting and raises hopes for her floor readiness sooner rather than later.
After an unusually long time of not being sure whether Oklahoma intended to be the outright best team in the regular season, this weekend convinced me. I just hope we still get to have a little fun with the lineups.
Bonus Questions:
How much higher can Stanford go? The Cardinal is one of 2026’s most composed teams, even with some lineup shuffles this week, but has been parked around the 197 mark so far. I think the ceiling is higher than that. I’d like to see it.
Where did that BYU meet come from? Coming so close to 197 on the road (even if it was at SUU, typically a friendly scoring environment) is so impressive and not something I saw coming. There’s a lot of talent in Provo. Figuring out how to optimize it would be fun.
Comment: Georgia is now proving it on the road as well.
Most of the pretty disconcerting Georgia teams of years past have had a couple of good scores through the season to keep hope alive. But Stegeman is just one of those places that can make magic happen, and that can, diplomatically, exaggerate small quantities of magic that may be organically occurring.
So the GymDogs scoring another 197 in Fayetteville this week, even in a loss, does a lot for my conviction in this team. Let’s be honest, the last decade has given us a lot of reasons not to believe. But this, finally, might be a version of Georgia that manages to live up to its potential.
Bonus Comments:
Here comes Ohio State. The Buckeyes started a smidge slow, as they sometimes do, but have built every meet since their second and broke 197 for the first time this weekend. The pieces are coming together.
I’m still a bit confused by LSU. Outside of Kailin Chio, who is obviously a god, this team has been just a touch erratic this year. There are plenty of potentially great routines, but the stars have infrequently aligned. That can definitely change, but for now, the variance is quite high.
Concern: That was a really bad choke by Florida.
This season has been unconvincing from the beginning, and being genuinely outcompeted by Missouri was always an option. This was not that. Three bars misses in the first rotation (from athletes who usually can handle themselves) was a pretty suboptimal outcome here.
The fact that this was potentially an exciting meet, and the competitiveness died so rapidly, contributes to how bad this loss feels. The fact that Florida hasn’t looked great at any point this year, even with a pretty front-loaded schedule, doesn’t help either. This particular drama, with the issues coming on typically strong bars and from veteran routines, is likely a fluke. The larger context of missing big opportunities to look like a real gymnastics team is not.
Bonus Concerns:
How can Metroplex keep getting away with this? I’ve written at length about how insane it is for meets like this not to have video coverage, and I won’t bother rewriting it all since nothing at all has changed. How was FloGymnastics somehow the best thing we ever got in terms of our ability to watch the damn sport? I would love to be talking about how consequential that great score by Arkansas might be right now, but I literally don’t know.
What the hell, Iowa State? I can’t expand much on this because, like everybody else, I’ve heard a hundred rumors and no concrete facts that I can actually reflect or report on. But this situation is pretty catastrophic. Also, does it make sense to ask the gymnastics community to stand in solidarity with the team without even knowing what happened? I feel like no.
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Article by Rebecca Scally
Yes! I’m so upset about the Metroplex Quad Meets! Why have a big meet if it’s difficult for us to watch. It is 2026, and we shouldn’t have to depend on going to a team’s social media page to get scores. It’s super frustrating. Why would I pay $20 with no commentary and no scores? Teams offered to participate should demand these issues to be resolved. If they can’t do it, they should look elsewhere!