NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Week 1 Recap: Oklahoma, LSU shine on opening weekend
As expected, some teams are picking up (almost) where they left off after last season, with Oklahoma and LSU – the top two teams in the NCAA Women’s Gymnastics preseason poll – earning the top scores of opening weekend.
Plaguing the weekend was the lack of streaming for the two big meets: the American Gold Women’s Collegiate Gymnastics Classic and the Music City Championship, which meant fans weren’t able to watch teams like No. 1 Oklahoma, No. 4 California, No. 10 UCLA, No. 17 Auburn, No. 19 Oregon State, and new program Wilberforce (among others). Instead, those teams resulted to filming routines, going live on social, and/or streaming last minute on YouTube, and much of the conversation surrounding the weekend was focused on a lack of viewing options for the sport and the fact that it was still a conversation in 2025.
Here are the first rankings of the season, although a caution that only a fraction of college teams competed this weekend, so they’re not necessarily indicative of the state of things.
For the master schedule and latest score updates, click here.
Top Scores of the Week
Team
Oklahoma earned the top score of the weekend with a 197.550, winning the Music City Championship and beating No. 17 Auburn (195.950), No. 27 BYU (194.625), and No. 23 Nebraska (194.475). The Sooners won every event title and had five compete in the all-around (not surprisingly, those were the top 5 finishers as well). Keira Wells won vault with a 9.95, 2024 NCAA bars and beam co-champion Audrey Davis continued her dominance with a 9.95 to win bars, Lily Pederson won beam with a 9.95, and 2024 NCAA beam co-champion Faith Torrez tied with Davis for the floor title (9.875). Torrez also won the all-around with a 39.625, with Pederson, Davis, Jordan Bowers, and Addison Fatta being the other all-arounders. It was a statement meet Pederson and Fatta, who are two of the team’s freshmen.
Notable debuts: Auburn was second behind Oklahoma at Music City, but the Tigers’ freshmen made a statement as well, with elites Katelyn Jong and Marissa Neal putting up competitive routines in their college debuts. Jong earned a 9.9 to finish third on bars and put up a 39.175 as Auburn’s lone all-arounder. Neal finished third on beam with a 9.9 of her own.
BARS: Keko Jong closes us out with a 9.9!#WarEagle pic.twitter.com/Sp7NAJUEtW
— Auburn Gymnastics (@AuburnGym) January 4, 2025
Individual
- All-Around: Aleah Finnegan (LSU) – 39.725
- Vault: Keira Wells (Oklahoma), Aleah Finnegan (LSU), Nikki Smith (Michigan State) – 9.95
- Uneven Bars: Audrey Davis (Oklahoma), Maddie Williams (Cal) – 9.95
- Balance Beam: Jade Carey (Oregon State), Lily Pederson (Oklahoma), Camie Winger (Utah) – 9.95
- Floor Exercise: Aleah Finnegan (LSU) – 9.95
Standout moment: While LSU put up the second-best team score of the weekend with a 197.300, it was senior (and newly-minted Olympian) Aleah Finnegan who put the exclamation mark on the Tigers’ win over No. 32 Iowa State. Finnegan’s 39.725 was the highest all-around score by an LSU gymnast on opening night, and she won all five individual titles (tying bars and beam with freshman Kailin Chio), later being named SEC Gymnast of the Week.
“I think in my time here, it may be the best opening performance that we’ve had top to bottom,” head coach Jay Clark said. “That does not mean it was mistake free, it just means that they did a great job from an approach and a mindset. They did not get distracted by things that could have distracted them. We went out there and earned a very strong opening score.”
Freshmen of the Week
In addition to the freshmen debuts mentioned at the Music City Championship above (Pederson, Fatta, Jong, and Neal), we’d be remiss to not mention the other two freshmen standouts of the weekend: LSU’s Kailin Chio and Utah’s Avery Neff.
Both were highly touted coming to college, with College Gym News having them ranked as five stars (and Neff the top recruit in the country), but that doesn’t always correlate to success, especially immediate success, on the mat. Yet, both athletes made waves in Week 1.
Chio was the first LSU freshman to compete in the all-around since Kiya Johnson in 2020 and recorded the school’s highest all-around debut score by a freshman with her 39.575. She earned 9.9+ scores on bars (9.9), beam (9.925), and floor (9.925) en route to tying for the bars and beam titles with Finnegan. She was later named SEC Freshman of the Week.
While Neff didn’t win any individual titles, she came out the gates and immediately contributed to Utah’s 196.775-194.450 win over Utah State. Neff earned a 38.725 in the all-around, including a 9.85 on bars and 9.875 on beam (watch below). Save for a fluke fall on floor, it was a great debut for the No. 1 recruit in the country.
Avery Neff on the beam. The core strength to do some of this is wild pic.twitter.com/H7njbZLeGg
— Josh Furlong (@JFurKSL) December 14, 2024
Olympians back in the spotlight
Another stream-lacking meet, Olympic gold medalists Jordan Chiles and Jade Carey made their returns to NCAA. Carey picked back up where she left off last April, having not taken a hiatus to train for the Olympics, but it was Chiles’ first collegiate meet since the 2023 NCAA championships, when she won both bars and floor.
So how are the Paris stars faring more than five months after their second Olympic Games?
Well, Carey won the all-around at the American Gold Women’s Collegiate Gymnastics Classic, scoring a 39.625. The Tokyo floor gold medalist and Paris vault bronze medalist had a 9.875 on vault (with a Yurchenko 1.5) and 9.9 on bars, which were both good for third on the respective events. She won beam outright with a 9.95 and tied for the floor title with another 9.9.
Chiles has been traveling seemingly nonstop and yet still had time to get another viral floor routine ready for the season and get back on all events but beam. While the U.S. stronghold is still embroiled in a legal case involving the floor bronze medal she was stripped of back in August, that didn’t stop her from tying for the vault title (9.9) and earning another 9.9 on bars in her return. Her Prince-themed floor routine scored a 9.775 the first time out, but there were some start value issues there that should get sorted soon. Expect Chiles to be vying for those 10s here soon enough.
Go crazy over Jordan Chiles' new floor routine, set to music by Prince! 💜 @ChilesJordan | #GoBruins pic.twitter.com/wMFZzDgCWQ
— UCLA Gymnastics (@uclagymnastics) January 5, 2025
Scoring takes center stage (for a good reason) as no 10s awarded
For the first time since 2018, no perfect 10s were awarded in the first week of the NCAA women’s gymnastics season, marking a potentially positive step toward some type of scoring reform in the sport.
It’s important to note, only 14 meets happened this weekend (there will be double that many next weekend), With so many teams not active, there’s no way to tell if this is actually a reflection of possible scoring improvements or just a lack of meets to start the season, but many fans are hopeful its a sign that new efforts to improve the ‘broken’ system are already working.
The Women’s Collegiate Gymnastics Association (WCGA) has created the Collegiate Judging Issue (CJI) working group to develop a judges evaluation system with the goal of creating “level playing field of scores across the country.” The long-term hope is to improve judging consistency and accuracy, formalize the postseason judges selection process (and reward high-performing judges), and improve the overall viewing experience for media and spectators. The creation of this initiative marks a key turning point for the sport, as it has the potential to grow exponentially in the coming years, especially if it’s able to garner more mainstream attention.
As part of this initiative, the WCGA hired Jennifer Sampson as the Supervisor of Officials in August 2024 – a new position that will oversee the Standardize Consistency in Officiating of Routine Evaluation Board (or SCORE Board). This group will evaluate uploaded videos of current NCAA routines and evaluate judges based on their accuracy – more points will be awarded the closer they are to the target score, and judges may lose points for major errors. Judges will then be ranked, with the highest-ranked judges more favored to receive postseason judging assignments.
It’s important to note that SCORE Board is beginning operations this season, but the NCAA hasn’t yet agreed to use the metrics for postseason judging assignments. The NCAA will review the data from the 2025 season, ensuring that the system is working, and then decide whether the metrics should be used moving forward.
There are some concerns with the new system, namely financial and time constraints, so time will tell if this can be the catalyst for long-term scoring reform.
