NCAA gymnastics recap: Oklahoma slips past Chiles, UCLA

The Oklahoma Sooners women’s gymnastics team did it again.

The Sooners surged to win the NCAA gymnastics championship Saturday in Fort Worth, Texas, outlasting U.S. Olympic gold medalist Jordan Chiles and UCLA to continue what has now become a decade of dominance within the sport.

Led by senior Jordan Bowers, who won the individual all-around title Thursday, No. 2 Oklahoma led from start to finish en route to what is the program’s sixth national championship in nine tries dating back to 2016. (The 2020 NCAA championships were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)

The Sooners built up such a strong lead that, by the final rotation, only No. 5 UCLA had a realistic chance of catching them. The Bruins instead had to settle for second, followed by No. 7 Missouri and No. 4 Utah. (The Red Rocks initially finished third, but a late successful scoring inquiry moved the Tigers ahead of Utah in the final standings.)

‘Just truly a fairytale ending,’ Bowers said in a televised interview on ABC. ‘… I’m so freaking proud of this team, and I’m so proud to be a Sooner.’

Oklahoma coach K.J. Kindler said on ABC that she thought her team’s performance in its first rotation, on balance beam, was pivotal in its run to the title. She said she told the Sooners before Saturday’s final that it would probably take a score of 49.6000 on that apparatus to win. They wound up with a score of 49.6125.

Oklahoma also put up the highest combined score of the afternoon on vault, which was the apparatus that doomed them a year ago. The Sooners entered last year’s NCAA championship semifinals as the No. 1 seed but fell apart on vault and failed to advance to the final.

‘This was a group that sacrificed for one another. This was a group that went out on a limb for one another,’ Kindler said on ABC. ‘You could see it in their chemistry. It changed us. And that’s why we’re here.’

Here’s everything else you might have missed from the women’s team final at the NCAA gymnastics championships:

NCAA gymnastics championships 2025 scores

Here are the final team standings at the 2025 NCAA gymnastics championships:

Jordan Chiles wows on floor exercise

Floor exercise has long been one of Jordan Chiles’ best events, and she flirted with a perfect 10 on the floor during UCLA’s first rotation Saturday.

Chiles, who was part of the U.S. team that won gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics, earned a score of 9.9750 to briefly boost UCLA into a share of first place. The score was seven-hundredths better than her performance in the semifinals, and one-hundredth better than the 9.9625 that teammate Brooklyn Moors earned to win this year’s NCAA title on the apparatus.

NCAA gymnastics individual champions include Jordan Bowers, Jordan Chiles

While Saturday was the team final, the individual women’s national championships were decided Thursday.

Here are the full results:

All-around

Jordan Bowers (Oklahoma): 39.7125
Grace McCallum (Utah): 39.6750
Faith Torrez (Oklahoma): 39.6375

Vault

Kailin Chio (UCLA): 9.9750
Sage Kellerman (Michigan State) and Grace McCallum (Utah): 9.9500
Amy Doyle (Michigan State): 9.9125

Uneven bars

Jordan Chiles (UCLA): 9.9750
Grace McCallum (Utah): 9.9625
Six-way tie: 9.9375

Balance beam

Helen Hu (Missouri): 9.9875
Emma Malabuyo (UCLA): 9.9750
Five-way tie: 9.9500

Floor exercise

Brooklyn Moors (UCLA): 9.9625
Jordan Bowers (Oklahoma), Grace McCallum (Utah) and Faith Torrez (Oklahoma): 9.9500
Aleah Finnegan (LSU), Skyla Schulte (Michigan State) and Lily Smith (Georgia): 9.9375

Michigan wins men’s NCAA gymnastics title

The NCAA championships in women’s gymnastics were followed by the men’s final later Saturday, where Michigan won its first NCAA title in 11 years.

Led by U.S. Olympic bronze medalists Fred Richard and Paul Juda, the Wolverines edged five-time defending NCAA champion Stanford with the last few scores of the final rotation. Richard also won the men’s individual all-around title.

Here are the full results from the men’s NCAA gymnastics final:

Michigan: 332.224
Stanford: 332.061
Oklahoma: 327.891
Nebraska: 326.222
Penn State: 317.258
Illinois: 316.293

How to watch NCAA gymnastics championships 2025

The gymnastics national championships aired live on ABC, with streaming options available on the ESPN app or Fubo.

Watch NCAA championships on Fubo

Who was the favorite in the NCAA gymnastics finals?

With No. 1 overall seed LSU eliminated in the semifinals Thursday, it’s hard to say.

If you would’ve gone off semifinal results, the favorite would’ve been No. 4 Utah. The Red Rocks paced the field Thursday with a total score of 197.7625 − fractions of a point ahead of No. 5 UCLA, which finished second. But if you would’ve preferred to go off seeding, or recent history, it would’ve been No. 2 Oklahoma. The Sooners cruised through their semifinal session and were led by the winner of this year’s individual all-around title, Jordan Bowers.

Here are how the four finalists stacked up in the semifinals:

Why didn’t we see a perfect 10 at the NCAA gymnastics championships?

There were no perfect scores in either the semifinals or finals, and there’s a simple reason why. A score of 10.0 is a particularly difficult feat to achieve at the national championships because there are more judges, which essentially raises the bar for a gymnast to get a perfect score. At regular season meets, each event is scored by two judges. At nationals, however, there are six — with the best and worst scores being dropped, and the other four being averaged.

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