Oklahoma gymnastics suffers stunning collapse in NCAA semifinals

Oklahoma had won five of the past seven national championships but will end this season in sixth place, the team’s worst finish since 2012.

“The Sooners are human, absolutely,” Oklahoma Coach K.J. Kindler told reporters afterward. “And we have lived in the luxury of success for over a decade. And we have certainly worked for it. But on any given day, anything can happen.”

Oklahoma’s unraveling began at the start. On vault, the Sooners’ first apparatus of the evening, three Oklahoma gymnasts had major mistakes. Faith Torrez, the first gymnast to compete, fell on her 1½-twisting vault, then Jordan Bowers and Katherine LeVasseur barely stayed on their feet with multiple deep steps backward on the same skill. Teams can only drop one score per apparatus so two of those low marks (9.45 and 9.375) factored into the Sooners’ total.

“The first person is very important, so when that mistake happened, everyone tightened up a little bit,” Kindler said. She thought Bowers and LeVasseur, who have both scored Perfect 10s on vault during their careers, might have tried too hard to stick their landings. In their attempt to avoid stepping forward, they landed too short.

In that first rotation, Oklahoma tallied a 48.325, more than a point lower than the majority of the team’s showings on that apparatus this season. The Sooners hadn’t scored that low on any apparatus since January 2021, and since 2012 Oklahoma had previously struggled that much on only two occasions.

From then on, Oklahoma’s chances of a comeback were slim and probably would have required major mistakes from other teams. Alabama had a meltdown on beam with four falls, but Utah (197.9375 final score) and Florida (197.875) held steady. The Sooners’ hopes evaporated in the third rotation when LeVasseur and Ava Siegfeldt fell during their beam routines.

Earlier in the meet, Kindler took Siegfeldt out of the vault lineup at the last minute. The sophomore had been set to compete last in the opening rotation, but after the three mistakes, Kindler thought Siegfeldt looked “fearful.” She had Audrey Davis, a senior, compete instead, and Davis scored a 9.725.

After Siegfeldt and LeVasseur finished their beam routines, Kindler had a long conversation with each gymnast. LeVasseur is a senior, and Kindler said she will not return for a fifth year. Kindler encouraged LeVasseur to “get it together here and end on your own terms” with a strong floor routine.

The hallmark of this Oklahoma team had been its consistency, which makes Thursday’s disappointing showing all the more jarring. Before this competition, Oklahoma hadn’t scored lower than a 197.775 all season. Several hours before the Sooners’ session began, LSU Coach Jay Clark called Oklahoma the “prohibitive favorite” to win the final.

The Sooners have notched 11 of the top 20 scores in the country this season, according to Road to Nationals, the website that maintains all NCAA gymnastics scores. That’s the most scores in the top 20 for any team since 1998, when such tracking started.

“I know that sounds weird, but perhaps we didn’t miss enough this year and weren’t under enough pressure in moments that really mattered to rebound from,” Kindler said. “You just don’t know. Losing can be very impactful on the growth of a team, and we were undefeated this year. … I think that when the issues started happening, that it got to them.”

The Sooners’ extraordinary dominance made them appear unstoppable. With a successful showing here en route to another national title, this Oklahoma squad may have been considered the greatest NCAA gymnastics team ever. Now, the Sooners will be remembered as the juggernaut that finished with a shocking collapse.