After a thrilling season, dynamic performance and often filled with amazing results, 2025 NCAA Gymnastics Championships are finally on us and only eight teams remain in controversy for the final crown.
Fort Worth, competing in Texas, Dicks will close the action at the first semi -final (4:30 pm on ESPN2) in Florida, Missouri, Florida, Missouri and Alabama, while LSU, UTA, UCLAA and Michigan State will compete in the evening session (ESPN2 at 9 am). The top two teams of each semi -finals will proceed to Saturday’s team’s final (ET at 4 pm), and individual winners will be nominated after the second semi -finals on Thursday.
According to ESPN analyst and 2015 NCAA, according to all-around champion Samantha Pesazake, it will be a weekend to remember.
“I think it is actually one of the most tight areas in the long run, perhaps,” Pesazake said on Friday. “I think all these teams are extremely competitive and this year has shown moments of greatness that can struggle with any team of the country.”
So for now, we are leaving with countless questions about how the competition will play. Can LSU successfully defend your title to go back-to-back? Will Oklahoma recover the trophy after a shocking distress in this incident in 2024? Can Florida, Utah or UCLA, or any of other teams capture, surprise and glory? And who will seize the top personal honor of the year in the all-round competition? Here you need to go in the last weekend of the college gymnastics season.
Defending Champs
This time a year ago, the LSU was the NCAA runner-up on four occasions, but it never secured the top position of the podium.
But of course, everything changed in the last April. The tigers captured in a wildly successful season and managed to capture their first national championships, behind the heroes of all the winners Heleh Bryant, and a winning final rotation on the beam, in which the team earned the highest collective score (49.7625) in the history of the event.
This victory inspired Bryant to return to the fifth year, and perhaps there is no team more than talent on its roster than LSU. That depth is shown during the season. Under the leadership of Bryant, Eleh Finnegon and Conor McClane and Freshman Fenome Kelin Chio, the team regularly ended the regular season at number 1 and at the top five on the vault and on other events. The LSU has lost only twice this season – during the second week, Sparouts Farmers Market in the Market Collage Quad and second place behind Oklahoma and two weeks later in Arkansas on the road – but has not lost since 24 January and has seen a little weakness since then.
Last month’s SEC Championship, which first included Oklahoma, LSU earned its highest score at the event with 198.200, and earned the title of conference for the sixth time. Earlier this month, Tigers won Pennsylvania regional, and their 198.050 was the second highest score in all regional competition. The team seems more than capable of running it back.
In January, head coach J Clarke said that the team’s targets for the year were to win the SEC and NCAA title, but were practical in their attitude and expectations.
Clarke told ESPN, “We (our goals) call it quickly and then we do not talk to them again.” “We put our head down and go to work and simply try to knock it a step at a time. We recognize small goals, the way we focus on some end results, if it becomes your complete existence, you do not disappoint more often.
“Of course, we want to win again. Does it happen this year? I don’t know. We just keep working on it.”
Redemption mission
No team has come close to the “dynasty” situation in the last decade compared to Oklahoma. Sooners arrived as champions of a two-time reign in Fort Worth last year, who were ready to achieve three beats.
Everyone knows what happened next. During the team’s initial rotation on Walt during the semi -finals, Oklahoma had three gymnast major landing errors, and the team was fourth in their second event. Despite a brave effort of the rest of the meeting, the sons were unable to close the deficit and handed over their initial exit since 2012.
But that was then.
Since that shocking result, Suuners have adopted their “underdog” position (to be clear, they are their words and perhaps no one else) and find inspiration in what happened. It has done this work.
The team has been effective throughout the session, led by Jordan Bovers and Faith Torage as well as the fifth year graduate student Audrey Davis. Oklahoma did not win the title at the SEC Championship, stood second instead, and lost in the Marki regular season match with LSU. But the team won everything else, and it is not hyperbole.
Suers’ score of 198.450 won him in the Washington Regional Finals, and was the top score in all fields. And the Bovers earned three perfect 10.0 scores (on the vault, bar and floor) during that competition. Oklahoma enters the NCAA championship with the highest season average score (197.908) in the country, and was first placed for most of the season.
As Suuners learned last year, anything is possible in Fort Worth. But the head coach KJ Kindleer told ESPN after the team’s first meeting that he believed that last year’s result would help him only in this season.
“We are responsible for what we happened to us, we made a mistake. Oh my Gosh, we are human. It is a difficult time to make a mistake but it happened. It would be foolish to ignore it because the rest of the country is not ignoring, so we are not compartmental, we are using it to improve us.”
Other contenders
LSU and Oklahoma are favorite for the title, but certainly there are some other teams that have to hoist the trophy on Saturday.
After a strong season, the fellow Elite Eight Teams Utah, Michigan State, Missouri and Alabama, won the number 3 Florida, won from 0.025 of a point – 3.025! – Its regional final for 22nd time in the history of the program. Both were ranked in the top five at the national level along with both Lean Wong and Selena Harris-Miranda, the gates would have been looking forward to the fifth straight year for Saturday’s “Four on the Floor” and winning their fourth NCAA title and the first since 2015.
According to ESPN analyst John Roethlisberger, who won the men’s NCAA title thrice during his collegiate career, what do they have to do so. He was in the “top level” entering the competition, with Florida LSU and Oklahoma, but added a warning.
“The NCAA Championship in Florida can have the highest roof of any team,” said Rothlisberger. “But they also have some ups and downs. They went to bars in the SEC championship and scored an NCAA record and then they go to the beam and they, for their standards – for their standards – a lot of other teams across the country can love their beams – but it was a big step for them and they were third.”
Similar possibilities can be said for Utah, which is a nine -time NCAA team champion, which is continuously competing in the 49th (!) Constant National Championships. Red Rock is entering on Thursday and Big 12 is coming in an incredible beginning season, winning regular season and championship title. By 2020 Olympic silver medalist Grace McClum, now a senior and all around and ruled the Big 12 champion in the vault, Utah has not lost a meeting since Florida fell on 2 February. It can be possible. At the end Red Rocks ended the drought and win their first NCAA championship since 1995?
The UCLA, former PAC -12 conference of Utah, was equally successful in its first year in Big Ten. After a shortfall in the season, the number 6-ranked brins conference was swept away through the competition, winning regular season and receiving the conference championship with a large ten-record 198.450 score. This performance was an indication of how good the team could be in its best form. Cha Campbell earned the all-round title and Jordan ChIles (Flore), Brooklyn Morse (Flore) and Sienna Alipio (Beam) all the right 10.0 during the competition. Competition in the Utah region, the UCLA ended just two-tenth of one point behind the First-Place Utah in the regional final. Bruce will now move forward in Saturday’s championships for the first time since 2019 – and then win his eighth NCAA title and first since 2018.
And do not count number 5 Michigan State, No. 7 Missouri and number 8 Alabama. All three teams have removed it for one reason. Rothlisberger said that Spartons would be a trendy betting pick.
“If someone is going to take a long shot in the country, if we can go to a sports book in Vegas for gymnastics, I think many people would like to put money on the Michigan state,” Rothlisberger said. “You are going to achieve great obstacles and they only have this fire and it is pancake that many other teams do not have.”
Personal honor
One of the most interesting aspects of the NCAA Championship is the individual qualifier-top all-round contestants and top finishers on each event from each regional who are not part of a competitive team. These gymnasts become almost temporary members of the teams, as they roam during the semi -final competition with their new squad. Some notable pair this week include Jade Carrie of Oregon State with LSU and Joskelin Roberson of Arkanses with Utah. Oklahoma told Denwar’s Madison Ulrige, who will rotate with Suners, an “Additional Special Bonus Teams” In a social media post,
The eyes of those individuals are also set on some bright new hardware. A senior and three -time Olympic medalist Kerry has done a historic season. All-around and beams ranked at number 1 in the nation, Kerry has won the all-round title in every meat this season, including Oregon State during the fourth position in the regional final. The four-time NCAA runner-up, including all-round in the last season, would like to conclude his decorated colleges with the final personal title.
The routine for a week on Monday.#MWM X #Gobeavs pic.twitter.com/pak2hriyua
– Oregon State Gymnastics (@bevergym) 1 April, 2025
Roberson, an alternative to the American Olympic team in Paris, has also performed a standout freshman season for the reserback and can make a mark in her NCAA Championship.
ESPN analyst and six -time Olympic medalist Elli Rayasman said last week, “This is really fun to embrace the college gymnastic world.” “And she is also an unprecedented contestant and (I) really excited to see how she does in her first national championship.”
While Kerry is a favorite for the all-around Crown due to its season-length results, the Bryant of LSU can be repeated, and his team partner Chio can also close his brilliant new season massively. Oklahoma’s Bovers and Torrences could compete, as Florida’s Wong and Harris-Miranda, McCallum of Utah or Campbells or Chips of UCLA. One thing is certain: Thursday’s star-staded meats will be an epic battle between some of the best and most bright in the game.
