A roller coaster of a day: The highs and lows of NCAA gymnastics semifinals

By / / Sports / 8 minutes of reading


FORT WORTH, Texas — Eight teams competed in the NCAA gymnastics semifinals on Thursday at Dickies Arena with a chance to advance to Saturday’s final.

After a day that included a staggering upset of the defending champion LSU, four teams remain. And now, the stage is set for a compelling conclusion to the 2025 season featuring perennial favorites Oklahoma, historic powerhouses Utah and UCLA and a first-time finalist in Missouri.

LSU, the 2024 champions who finished the regular season ranked No. 1 and won the SEC conference title last month, were stunned in the day’s tightly contested second session and were bested by second-place UCLA by .2125 of a point. The team appeared devastated as the final scores flashed on the arena’s screens, sealing their fate. The Tigers were 0.2375 of a point behind Utah, the session winner.

“Tonight’s competition was absolutely everything you can hope for in a national championship,” said UCLA head coach Janelle McDonald. “It was so neck and neck and just such a fight for every single event and every single routine. It was an incredible meet to be a part of.”

Florida, which finished the regular season ranked No. 3, was also sent home early, when the Gators finished in third place during the first session.

Oklahoma’s Jordan Bowers won the all-around title with a 39.7125, narrowly defeating Utah’s Grace McCallum, fellow Sooner Faith Torrez and Oregon State’s Jade Carey.

Who else wowed on Thursday? And who else took home event titles? In case you missed any of the action, we’ve got you covered.

Return of the Sooners

The Oklahoma Sooners knew all eyes were on them entering Thursday’s first semifinal, and for good reason. During last year’s semifinals, the team arrived looking to win its third straight NCAA team title, and as the favorites to do just that.

But after the team recorded three significant landing errors during its first rotation on vault, the Sooners’ dreams were dashed and they were handed one of the most shocking upsets in recent memory. Since then, head coach K.J. Kindler said she had 364 long days to think about what happened and had been bombarded with seeing footage of the competition over and over.

Ironically, and perhaps poetically, the Sooners had to finish Thursday’s meet on vault, but Torrez and Bowers — the team’s two all-arounders who both struggled on the event last year — insisted to reporters they didn’t let it faze them.

And that strategy worked. No one fell on the event, and Oklahoma recorded a session-best 49.2750 on vault to clinch the first semifinal with a 197.5500. Bowers, a senior and the anchor on the event, had a team-high 9.8875, the second-highest score in the first semifinal.

Bowers and Torrez both also scored 9.95s on their floor routines — good enough for second place — to lift the team and continue the quest for a seventh national championship.

Kindler couldn’t help but address last year in her opening comments to the media on Thursday following the meet.

“I don’t ever want to see TV footage of Oklahoma falling over again on vault,” Kindler said. “That dragon is slayed and we’re past it.”

Kindler added that she was proud of the team but admitted it was far from their best performance and knew they could do better.

“We were definitely not our best,” Kindler said. “It felt like we were competing with some weight on our shoulders a little bit. So we need to compete with more freedom, more faith.”

History for Missouri

Entering the competition, Missouri had never advanced to the final, and its best-ever result at NCAA championships was a fifth-place finish. But that all changed on Thursday behind some standout performances and the meet-clinching heroics of Helen Hu.

Battling routine by routine in the final rotation with Florida, Missouri closed out the day on beam. And it all came down to Hu, the Tigers’ final gymnast on the event and a beam specialist who returned to the team for a fifth year after taking 2024 off.

Trailing by a quarter tenth of a point when she mounted the beam, Hu was nearly flawless, earning a 9.9875 to secure the team’s second-place finish and punch its first-ever ticket to the final. She also won the NCAA beam title.

The team began to celebrate as soon as Hu’s score was shown on the jumbotron — and again when Florida’s final score appeared shortly after. Missouri ultimately edged Florida, 197.3000 – 197.200.

Members of the Missouri team could still be heard screaming and cheering in celebration long after the meet was over in the hallways of the arena near the locker rooms. Hu said she was unaware of what score she needed until after she was done competing.

“I just go in, this is my beam routine, whether we need it or we don’t, I’m going to go up and do what I always do,” Hu said later. “And so I really had no idea what the situation was. And when we circled up in and said ‘Whether or not we make it, we can be proud of what we did today.’ And I agreed with that, and then maybe 10 seconds later, the score popped up and I was just in complete, utter shock. I believed we could do it, but I also knew that it took a lot of little things for it to happen on this day for us. And so yeah, [I felt] shock, joy, excitement, all the things, crying.”

Head coach Shannon Welker — who joked he was late to his news conference because he was renegotiating his contract — said he was proud of what his team accomplished but wasn’t surprised.

“I really felt like this was a special team this year, and we had an opportunity to be the best team in the University of Missouri gymnastics history, and so that would’ve meant we had to have been at least fifth. That was our highest,” Welker said. “So today we obviously exceeded that, but it’s just so nice to see what I thought could be actually come to fruition … [I’m] just really excited to be there on Saturday.”

Battle for the night

Just how tight was Thursday’s night session? All four teams — Utah, UCLA, LSU and Michigan State — were within .1875 of a point entering the final rotation. And Utah, UCLA and LSU were all within .0750 of a point. Needless to say, the crowd seemed to live and breathe with every routine and every score.

But it was Utah and UCLA that came out on top behind the Red Rocks’ valiant effort on bars and the Bruins’ impressive showing on beam. Both teams were joyous when the final scores were shown and they realized what it meant. McCallum closed it out for Utah with a 9.9625 and Emma Malabuyo did the same for UCLA with a giant 9.975.

Utah’s Amelie Morgan said everyone was aware of how close it was but neither she, nor her teammates, let it impact their performances or confidence.

“I think it is always a thing in gymnastics, ‘Keep your eyes on your own team and don’t care about anyone else,’ but at a certain point, you realize it’s pretty close,” Morgan said. “But I think for us and throughout this whole season, we have really emphasized having no doubt, and I know for me and pretty much all of our team, there was no doubt in our mind that we weren’t going to make it. And even though it was that close, I think we knew we could do it. We knew we are that good and I think that’s what carried us through.”

Utah, nine-time NCAA champions, and UCLA, seven-time NCAA champions, are now back in familiar territory and will both look to bring back the ultimate hardware on Saturday. It would be a long time coming for both, but especially Utah, which hasn’t won since 1995. UCLA last claimed the title in 2018.

Event champions

In addition to Bowers claiming the all-around title and Hu’s beam victory, three other gymnasts became individual NCAA champions on Thursday.

While it was a disappointing night for LSU overall, Kailin Chio still managed to close out her heralded freshman season with the top podium spot on vault with a 9.975 for her Yurchenko 1.5.

UCLA’s Chiles, already a two-time NCAA champion and Olympic gold medalist, took home the top honors on the uneven bars with a near-perfect 9.975. Chiles’ thrilled reaction after sticking her double layout dismount showed just how much it meant to her.

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Jordan Chiles brought to tears after sticking landing on bar routine

Jordan Chiles sticks the landing on a bar routine and is emotional while hugging her coach.

And Brooklyn Moors, Chiles’ teammate and a fellow Olympian, nabbed her first national championship with her sensational floor routine that’s gotten high praise and high scores all season long. She earned a 9.9625 on UCLA’s first event of the night. Moors called the individual honor a “cherry on top” but said the real prize was getting to go to Saturday’s final with her team.

“We’re here to do it for the team,” Moors said. “And I think I say it every time [but] this team is something special and when we put it together, it’s quite amazing.”





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