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NCAA Gymnastics Championships: OU Needs One More Team Win to Repeat

By Chip Rouse

Apr 14, 2017; St. Louis, MO, USA; Oklahoma Sooners gymnast Maggie Nichols celebrates after performing on the bars during the semi-finals of the 2017 NCAA Women's Gymnastics Championships at Chaifetz Arena. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports
Apr 14, 2017; St. Louis, MO, USA; Oklahoma Sooners gymnast Maggie Nichols celebrates after performing on the bars during the semi-finals of the 2017 NCAA Women's Gymnastics Championships at Chaifetz Arena. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports /
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The field has been cut in half in the women’s NCAA Gymnastics Championships, with No. 1 Oklahoma and No. 2 LSU set to battle it out as two of the Super Six finalists on Saturday at Chaifetz Arena on the campus of St. Louis University.

The Sooners are seeking a repeat of their 2016 national championship and the opportunity to give Oklahoma its first national title of the 2016-17 school year.

Oklahoma, the overall top seed in this year’s championship, finished first in Semifinal I on Friday, posting a team score of 197.7250 and advancing the Sooner women to the championship finals.

The top six seeds in the country in women’s gymnastics all advanced to Saturday night’s Super Six, setting up as competitive a finals as you could hope for.

In addition to the Sooners, the remainder of the Super Six finalists includes No. 2 LSU, No. 3 Florida, No. 4 Utah, No. 5 UCLA and No. 6 Alabama.

“It was tough out there for us…There were some uncharacteristic mistakes, but I think they were definitely working out some jitters.” –K.J. Kindler, OU women’s gymnastics coach on her team’s performance in the 2017 NCAA Championships

Oklahoma is going to have its hands full on Saturday. LSU poses perhaps the biggest challenge for the Sooners. The second-seeded Tigers won Semifinal II on Friday, posting the highest score of the two semifinal rounds (198.2750).

Oklahoma won three of the four team events in its semifinal, winning the vault, beam and uneven bars events, and finished third behind UCLA and Utah in floor exercise.

“It was tough out there for us,” said OU women’s gymnastics coach K.J. Kindler after Friday’s semifinal. “We started out a little bit shaky on floor, lots of adrenaline and little extra steps. There were some uncharacteristic mistakes, but I think we were definitely working out some jitters.

This is the 17th all-time appearance in the NCAA Championships for the Oklahoma women and 14th consecutive.

Four different OU gymnasts have combined this season for nine perfect scores of 10.0, and freshman Maggie Nichols owns six of them, including one in each individual event (vault, beam, uneven bars, floor). Chayse Capps (balance beam), Nicole Lehrmann (uneven bars) and McKenzie Wofford (uneven bars) have the other three.

Oklahoma is 23-0 coming into this year’s national championship, including a 23-0 record in the regular season. The Sooners have won 61  consecutive meets, with 48 of those wins coming ont he road.

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