Pac-12 post-mortem: A look back (and forward) at a college gymnastics dynasty

With Oklahoma joining the SEC for the 2025 season, that conference is quickly cementing itself as the preeminent NCAA gymnastics juggernaut. Despite the undeniable dynasty it has and continues to create, the SEC is far from the only conference with a storied history in the sport.

Flashing back to the early days of gymnastics being a sanctioned NCAA sport, another dynasty appears – the Pac-12. Among the eight schools formerly in the Pac-12 sponsoring gymnastics lie 16 team national titles and a whopping 100 individual national champions. With conference realignment spelling at least the temporary end of Pac-12 gymnastics as we know it, there is no time like the present to look back on what would end up becoming college gymnastics’ first-ever true dynasty, and to see what the future looks like – both for the team currently left in the conference and the storied programs that previously filled its ranks.

Before NCAA gymnastics was introduced as a championship sport in 1982, the schools that would come to join the Pac-12 were already pushing boundaries in the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), with Utah winning an AIAW title in 1981.

The future Pac-12 didn’t just compete in that 1981 championship – it dominated, with UCLA, Arizona State, Oregon State, and the University of Southern California all finishing in the top nine along with Utah. UCLA and Oregon State accounted for four of the five individual titles – all except floor exercise – with Bruin Sharon Shapiro taking the top spot in the all-around and on vault, her teammate Diane Dovas taking the bars title, and Oregon State’s Laurie Carter winning beam. 

Flashing forward one year to 1982, Greg Marsden’s Lady Utes won the first official NCAA gymnastics tournament – and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that. That’s right, Utah five-peated, a feat that would not be repeated until Georgia won five in a row from 2005 to 2009. By securing additional titles in 1990, 1992, 1994, and 1995, the Utes – who adopted the nickname “Red Rocks” in 1992 – cemented themselves as the most successful program of NCAA gymnastics’ infancy.

After being the runner-up three times, UCLA broke through as the next Pac-12 school to win a team national title in 1997, led by famed head coach Valorie Kondos Field and a litany of gymnastics legends, including Canadian world team member Leah Homma and 1992 Olympian Stella Umeh, current Clemson head coach Amy Smith, and 1992 Olympian for Guatemala Luisa Portocarrero. The Bruins would go on to win additional titles in 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2010, and 2018 – the Pac-12’s final team national title as we knew it. Alongside the massive team success came individual success as well, especially for ​​Jamie Dantzscher, who tied the Perfect 10 record, scoring 28 during her time at UCLA from 2001 to 2004.  

By the end of the 2004 season, the Pac-12 conference had made history again. Just two days apart from each other, Stanford and UCLA put up the highest score ever in NCAA gymnastics – 198.875. This record would stand for 20 years until the 2024 season, when Oklahoma scored a 198.950.

Stanford gymnastics was far from done after that historic 2004 season, however. Few people know Pac-12 (or Pac-10, as it was previously known) gymnastics as well as two-time Pac-10 all-around champion and Stanford Athletics Hall of Fame inductee Tabitha Yim. From 2005 to 2008, Yim racked up 14 All-American honors and helped lead the Cardinal to back-to-back national finals in her junior and senior years. Quickly after graduating, in 2010, Yim joined the Stanford coaching staff as an assistant before moving to Arizona to be the head coach of the Wildcats for two seasons. Ahead of the 2018 season, Yim returned to her alma mater, this time as head coach. Her six-year tenure has faced highs and lows, including a COVID-riddled five-meet-long 2021 season, but Yim’s Cardinal broke through in 2024, finishing the season ranked fifth – Stanford’s highest ranking since 2015. 

For Yim, the legacy of the Pac-12 is a simple one: “Offering a full student-athlete experience.” Originally wary of how she would fit in with the Cardinal and balance the academic rigor of Stanford with her sporting career, Yim was quickly welcomed into the college landscape by former head coach Kristen Smyth, who Yim says saw something in her that she did not see in herself.

A southern California native herself, Yim had been long exposed to the Pac-12 teams. By the time she made it to college, she was fully ready to take advantage of the holistic development prevalent at Pac-12 institutions, noting how her coaches “played such a big role in [her] development as a student-athlete, as a person, and eventually as a coach.”

Despite Stanford joining the Atlantic Coast Conference in August, Yim also made sure to recognize those who have paved the way for Stanford’s recent successes, shouting out “all the alums from Stanford women’s gymnastics who set the path within the Pac-12 [and] helped build Stanford to what it is now.”

Looking back at the Pac-12’s tenure as a whole, few moments have felt as triumphant as the 2018 national championship. UCLA didn’t enter the meet as the favorite, but the Bruins were able to overcome a worse-than-usual vault score in the second rotation to edge out the reigning champion Oklahoma Sooners. Perhaps the single most iconic moment in Pac-12 gymnastics history was Peng-Peng Lee’s Perfect 10 on beam to seal the national title for the Bruins. Not only was this the last routine of the meet for UCLA, it was also the last routine of Lee’s storied six-year college career, which included 10 Perfect 10s, one individual national title, nine All-American honors, and the 2018 Honda Award. 

Alongside Lee, 2012 Olympic team champion Kyla Ross and 2011 junior national champion Katelyn Ohashi were some of the conference’s most prolific athletes. In 2019, Ross became the second-ever gymnast to earn a second Gym Slam, meaning she had received a Perfect 10 on every event twice. The biggest story of the Pac-12 in 2019, however, was Ohashi’s viral floor routine, which has amassed over 247 million views to date. Alongside Ohashi, routines from Felicia Hano, Sophina DeJesus, Jordan Chiles, Nia Dennis, Gracie Kramer, and Margzetta Frazier have garnered millions of views on the backs of spectacular choreography from assistant coach BJ Das. 

The dawn of the 2020s could have been the golden age of Pac-12 gymnastics, with stacked senior classes from both UCLA and Utah headlining the conference entering the decade. But alas, all good things have to come to an end. In June of 2022, UCLA (and the University of Southern California) announced their intention to move to the Big Ten, the first domino to fall in the eventual elimination of the conference as we know it. In August of 2023, Washington and Oregon announced that they were following UCLA and USC to the Big Ten, while Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah decided to make the move to the Big 12 a mere two days later, following Colorado, which had announced its intention to return to its former conference one week prior. The final nail in the coffin came a month later, in September 2023, when Cal and Stanford announced their decision to leave the Pac-12 in favor of the ACC. 

Notably, this realignment left the Pac-12 with two teams, one of which – Oregon State – sponsors gymnastics. While the Beavers have never clinched a team championship, they have qualified to the NCAA tournament every year since 1975 and have six individual champions, the most recent of which was Amy Durham on floor in 1993. National titles aside, it is impossible to talk about Oregon State gymnastics without mentioning its most successful gymnast of the last 20 years: Jade Carey. 

When Carey verbally committed to Oregon State back in 2014, she was still a Level 9 gymnast with tons of potential. By the time she signed an NLI with the Beavers in 2017, she was a first-year elite gymnast on the periphery of greatness. Carey quickly cemented herself as a force to be reckoned with after winning two silver medals at the 2017 World Championships in Montreal, Canada. After forgoing the 2018 World Championships in order to qualify for the 2020 Olympics as an individual, Carey picked up an additional two World medals in 2019. Two years later, she became the Olympic floor champion at the Tokyo Games.

With such a successful elite career and the weight of being the first individual Olympic gold medalist to compete in NCAA gymnastics (alongside Olympic teammate Suni Lee), the pressure was on Carey to deliver – and deliver she did. Within two weeks of starting her college career, Carey had broken the Oregon State all-around record with a massive 39.800, a record she would go on to break a mere two weeks later when she scored 39.825 on the back of her first career Perfect 10. This was just the beginning for the emerging college star; she would go on to earn 11 more 10s from 2022-2024 while once again besting her all-around record, scoring a 39.875 not once, but twice during the 2023 season. She still delivered in her team in 2024 as well, despite training for the Paris Games, where she would eventually win a team gold medal and bronze on vault.

Though the future is still uncertain, things have started to look up for the Beavers, with the Pac-12 announcing in September the expansion of the conference to include five new schools for the 2026 season, including two that sponsor gymnastics (Boise State and Utah State).

While change is on the horizon, the former Pac-12 teams see conference realignment as an opportunity to rise to new heights on new stages. For Yim’s Stanford Cardinal, the goal is for “[Stanford’s] work to stand on its own and to be rewarded from any angle – from every panel everywhere in the country.” 

Coming off of a historic year, there are obvious expectations of success moving forward, but besides the numbers, Yim hopes to continue her mission from when she took the head coaching position: “Figuring out how to best work with each person to bring out the best in our athletes.” 

For the Utah Red Rocks, head coach Carly Dockendorf thinks the mindset is similar: “Our job is still the same… to be the best we can be and continue to focus on our gymnastics, no matter what conference we’re in.” 

With nine NCAA national championships and four consecutive third-place finishes at nationals under their belt, expectations are high for the Red Rocks to continue producing big results in the Big 12. With a new crop of talented gymnasts coming in, including the top-rated recruit of the 2024 class, Avery Neff, Dockendorf is excited to “elevate and push the gymnasts on our team to continue to get better.”

To put into perspective the legacy of the conference, every former Pac-12 team has had at least one individual NCAA national champion, with the first for each program being: Utah’s Sue Stednitz and Elaine Alfano in 1982, Oregon State’s Mary Ayotte-Law in 1982, Arizona State’s Jeri Cameron in 1983, Washington’s Yumi Mordre in 1987, UCLA’s Kim Hamilton in 1987, Arizona’s Anna Basaldua in 1991, Stanford’s Larissa Fontaine in 1998, and Cal’s Maya Bordas in 2021.

All hope may not be lost, however, for fans looking to revisit the glory days of the Pac-12. Boise State and Utah State joining ahead of the 2026 season will give the conference three gymnastics teams. This leaves the Pac-12 at a fork in the road, having to decide whether to add the additional Mountain West gymnastics teams (San Jose State and Air Force) as associate conference members for gymnastics or to petition any of the other three schools joining the conference – San Diego State, Fresno State, and/or Colorado State – to add teams, much like Clemson did en route to the ACC sponsoring gymnastics.

Whether it be the viral routines or the often free Pac-12 Insider streams, many NCAA gymnastics fans have fostered a soft spot for the conference. While none of the eight programs that formerly populated the Pac-12 are going anywhere, there is going to be an obvious and undeniable shift in the collegiate gymnastics landscape. Conference realignment may serve to make college gymnastics all the more competitive, with top programs formerly in different conferences meeting each other on an increasingly regular basis. While matchups like UCLA vs. Utah are being preserved despite realignment, there is a certain level of excitement to be had regarding new matchups like Cal and Stanford battling for the top of the ACC standings against NC State and Clemson and annual meetings between UCLA and the 2021 national champion Michigan Wolverines. 

While these schools acclimate to their respective new conferences, NCAA gymnastics fans will have the pleasure of watching a new dynasty form and grow as it strives to reinvent the holistic academic prestige and record-breaking athletic performance of its predecessor.