Oklahoma gymnastics: Sooner women set NCAA record in winning Big 12 Championship

The No. 1 ranked women's Oklahoma gymnastics squad can now add Big 12 champion to its 2024 season accomplishments, winning its 15th and final Big 12 title on Saturday and recording an NCAA record team score in the process.

The two-time defending national champion Sooner women posted a record score of 198.950, the highest score ever achieved in women's college gymnastics history. The previous record of198.850, set by UCLA and Stanford in 2004, stood for 20 years.

The Sooners bested Denver (197.975), BYU (197.050), Iowa State (196.350) and West Virginia (195.125) to capture their third consecutive conference title.

Oklahoma contributed to its record-setting team score with five individual scores of perfect "10," and three of them belonged to junior Jordan Bowers as individual champion on vault, beam and floor exercise. It was first perfect score of the season on vault, her second on beam and third straight on the floor.

Senior Ragan Smith won her specialty, the horizontal beam, for the second straight year with a perfect "10" score, her fifth this season, and sophomore Faith Torrez shared the individual title on floor with her first career "10" in that event.

Bowers was the all-around champion with a score of 39.925, the highest all-around score by a Big 12 athlete at a conference championship.

The Lloyd Noble Center in Norman was the site of this year's Big 12 Women's Gymnastics Championship, a fitting send off for the conference champion Sooners, who move to the SEC for next season. In contrast to the Big 12, which has just five teams that compete in women's gymnastics compared to eight (soon to be nine with Oklahoma) in the sport.

The Sooners will begin defense of their two straight national championships when the NCAA regional competition begins April 3-7. OU will learn to which regional it is assigned on Monday. It will be either Gainesville, Florida; Fayetteville, Arkansas; Ann Arbor, Michigan, or Berkeley, California.