Oklahoma gymnastics: No. 1 Sooners win 14th Big 12 Championship
By Chip Rouse
Saturday was a good day for Sooner women’s athletics. The women’s basketball team won its first-round game in the NCAA Tournament, and the women’s Oklahoma gymnastics squad tuned up for its NCAA Championship run winning its 14th Big 12 Championship.
The defending national champion Sooners won all four team events plus the all-around title in sweeping to their 10th Big 12 Women’s Gymnastics title in the past 11 years.
Oklahoma posted a winning score of 198.500 but was penalized a tenth of a point for being out of order on the uneven bars. Still, the reduced score of 198.400 was good enough to win the conference championship over 13th-ranked Denver (197.175), host West Virginia (196.225) and Iowa State (193.750). Those are the only four Big 12 schools that participate in women’s gymnastics.
The Sooners winning team score tied their third best of the season and was the fourth best score in the nation this season.
Senior Ragan Smith posted a perfect 10 score on the beam in leading the Sooners to a score of 49.800, their best team score in this event in program history. It was Smith’s fourth perfect 10 in this event, placing her fifth on the Oklahoma career list for perfect 10 routines.
Fifth-year senior Olivia Trautman and sophomore Danielle Sievers shared the individual championship on vault with Rylie Mundell of Denver. Trautman and junior Audrey Davis were co-champions on bars and there was a four-way tie for the highest score in floor exercise between Oklahoma sophomore Jordan Bowers and freshman teammate Faith Torrez, Jessica Hutchinson of Denver and Maddie Diab of Iowa State.
Bowers won the all-around crown with a score of 39.700 and became the first OU gymnast to win the conference all-around championship since Maggie Nichols in 2018.
Oklahoma’s season record is 17-1 with a lone loss coming to then-No. 2 Michigan on March 6.
The OU women will now head into NCAA regional competition, and they won’t have to go far to do so. Norman is one of four host sites for the NCAA regionals to be held March 29 to April 1 at Lloyd Noble Center. That’s where Oklahoma will begin the final stretch to defend its 2022 national title and win its sixth all-time.
The top two teams out of each regional site will qualify for the NCAA semifinals April 13 in Ft. Worth Texas. The NCAA Women’s Championship will be decided in Ft. Worth on April 15.