Oklahoma gymnastics: One more shining moment ahead?
By Chip Rouse
For two years running, Oklahoma gymnastics has swept both the men’s and women’s national championships, and they are on the verge of making it a hat trick.
Related Story: Big weekend ahead for top-ranked OU gymnastics
The Sooners are in the NCAA women’s finals, called the Super Six, in St. Louis as well as the men’s finals in Chicago by virtue of team victories in Friday’s preliminaries. The reigning national champion Sooners, on Saturday in both locations, will go after a fourth consecutive national championship on the men’s side and a third straight national crown on the women’s side.
That is a truly remarkable feat that has been accomplished by no other program in the history of the collegiate sport.
Led by sophomore Maggie Nichols, who captured the NCAA women’s all-around championship in Friday’s semifinals, taking first place in every event except one, the vault. She recorded the championship’s top score on the uneven bars (a perfect score of 10), on the beam and in floor exercise. The one event she did not finish first in, the vault, was won by teammate Brenna Dowell.
The No. 1-ranked Sooners finished the semifinal session with a top score of 198.0500. They will be joined in the six-team NCAA Championship final on Saturday by No. 2 LSU, No. 3 UCLA, No. 4 Utah, No. 5 Florida and No. 11 Nebraska.
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This year marks the sixth consecutive season and eighth overall that the Oklahoma women gymnasts have advanced to the Super Six, the grand stage of NCAA women’s gymnastics.
The OU men are on an even more remarkable journey this season.
The Sooners posted the highest team score (419.991) of the two semifinal sessions on Friday and put themselves in excellent position to become only the third team in the history of the NCAA Men’s Gymnastics to win four consecutive national titles and only the second to own as many as twelve total.
Sooner junior Yul Moldauer continued his national dominance on the still rings, posting the best individual score in that event in the men’s semifinals, and senior Hunter Justis finished first in the vault.
Oklahoma goes into the finals on Saturday with the top score from Friday’s preliminaries and as the overall top seed in the championship. The other teams that will compete against the Sooners on Saturday are No. 2 Minnesota, No. 4 Illinois, No. 6 Stanford, No. 7 Nebraska and No. 8 Penn State.
The Sooners consecutive win streak in NCAA gymnastics has now reached 92, which matches the 1990-94 University of North Carolina women’s soccer team as the fourth longest winning streak in NCAA history.