Why not Cal? Cal Women's Gymnastics in NCAA Championship Final: 1 PM PT on ABC
Cal competes against LSU, Utah, and Florida for the Collegiate Women's Gymnastics throne
There is plenty of room on the Cal Women’s Gymnastics bandwagon.
Whether you are a fellow Cal alum, a Cal sports fan, a gymnastics fan, or none of the above, let the talented and charismatic Cal team make you a fan. On Thursday, the California Golden Bears earned their first-ever shot to compete for the NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Team National Championship in program history. No.3 Cal and No.2 LSU booked the first two berths in the “Four on the Floor”.
The opportunity to win a national title looked even more golden when the No.1 ranked and previously undefeated Oklahoma Sooners fumbled away their chance to advance to the championship final in the latter national semifinal session. No.4 Florida and No.5 Utah earned the other two championship final berths.
Anyone of the four finalists can win the 2024 NCAA Championship. We might be a bit biased here, but Cal Golden Bears got the best story out of the four as the upstart underdogs. A program that was saved from the chopping block at the last minute back in 2010, Cal Women’s Gymnastics had steadily climbed to the top of the rankings under the direction of co-head coaches Justin Howell and Elisabeth Crandall-Howell. The Howells installed the “one day better” motto and the program had indeed slowly but surely improved every year to create a new winning culture; by their success in maximizing the performances of the student-athletes in and out of the gym, Cal improved on the talent of the incoming recruits every cycle. Even when marginal ranking improvements became harder, the program is still finding a way to climb. Will Cal Women’s Gymnastics reach the pinnacle of the collegiate women’s gymnastics world today?
The 2024 Cal Bears have earned well-deserved national exposure today from advancing to the final session of the season. It was only in 2021 that Disney/ESPN opted to give the NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championship final a wider audience by being on ABC. Like many other women’s sports lately, this was a rating success. Coincidentally, you can easily spot the Cal squad, who were eliminated in the semifinal round, in the audience rooting for a Michigan program that won the NCAA title for the first time. The freshmen on that Cal team are now senior leaders. Michigan is only the latest and merely 7th school to have won the NCAA team championship. They won the national title on their first trip to the final championship session.
Utah (9) and Florida (3) have won in the past although not for 19 and 9 years, respectively. LSU has come close to winning several times. All three schools were in the 2023 NCAA Championship final with Oklahoma, who won for the second consecutive year and 6th time overall.
One only needs to look at the Cal team last year to see the squad exceeding expectations a little bit earlier. Knowing that Cal will host a regional in 2024, one might have thought that Cal would win the program’s first NCAA Regional this year. Yet the 2023 Cal Bears won the NCAA Pittsburgh Regional. Given who will be back and the pedigree of the incoming recruiting class, Cal looks like a championship favorite in 2025. Yet if the Golden Bears can perform up to their ability on Saturday, a 2024 national championship is a very realistic outcome, without major mistakes from the other three teams.
198.25 is roughly the target score for the winner of the NCAA Championships. In the regular season, there are only two judges for each event. That number doubles to four in the NCAA Regionals, where the top and bottom scores are dropped. In the NCAA Championships, there are six judges for each event and the scores are the average of the middle four. With more eyes looking for deductions, postseason scores are generally a little bit lower. In 2024, Cal twice rewrote the team record for the highest score. Bears earned a 198.400 at UCLA. Two weeks later, they got a 198.550 at Stanford while also becoming the sole Pac-12 regular season champions for the first (and last) time. The meet after that, Cal nearly replicated that feat with a 198.500.
Cal is led by two superstars all-arounders in junior Mya Lauzon and sophomore eMjae Frazier. While neither was able to unseat LSU’s Haleigh Bryant as the NCAA individual all-around champion on Thursday, the two Cal Bears have consistently been top-6 nationally.
Mya Lauzon is always seen with a big smile on her face, either performing or providing energy to her teammates from the sideline. One of the upperclassmen leader on the team, Lauzon took a major step forward between last year and this year from being a specialist to all-arounder. She has a team-high three “perfect 10s” this year, two in the regular season on the balance beam and the first postseason 10 in Cal history on vault at the Regional Final.
What do you see when you see sophomore eMjae Frazier? You see one of the three students featured in the new Cal/UC Berkeley national ad this year. Even though some of her exploits in that ad outside of gymnastics are fictional (this physics major is slightly bummed when she told me that she does not actually work on quantum computing in her spare time), I do wonder if they might change a little bit of that ad next year if Frazier leads the Bears to a national title. eMjae Frazier has been a superstar since her first meet in a Cal leotard. She is driven to improve her gymnastics, even after rewriting the Cal record book for all-around score twice this year. Once last year and once this year, Frazier has earned perfect 10s for her floor exercise. eMjae Frazier got the highest ceiling of all Cal gymnasts.
Having two reliable all-arounders who can score 9.9+ on all four apparatuses gave Cal a nice score floor in most meets this season. The two Cal superstars also have very different styles in flexibility/power and skills displayed and those differences keep the judges more engaged in the routines.
Juniors Maddie Williams and Ella Cesario both expanded their roles on the team from specialists to all-around this season. The other routines go to seniors Andi Li (bars and beam) and Gabby Perea (bars and beam), freshman Kyen Mayhews (floor and vault), sophomore Jayden Silvers (vault), and junior Jordan Kane (floor). All of these routines can earn scores of 9.9+ and have track records of being performed under pressure. Cal does special practices, particularly the balance beam, under pressure. Beyond just imagining that they have to perform after a teammate has fallen, Bears sometimes practice beam routines with coaches and teammates trying to distract them with airhorn, etc.
In two of their three postseason meets under the most pressure, Cal had to overcome mistakes to drop low scores. In their postseason opening meet (when the Bears probably could have advanced even counting one fall), the entire beam rotation performed valiantly after the lead-off mistake. In the NCAA Championship semifinal, Ella Cesario had to hit a clutch vault and eMjae Frazier, Mya Lauzon, and Gabby Perea had to perform beam routines under pressure.
Technically, Cal had already clinched the 2nd best score of that meet before this routine had started as the Stanford final score had just come in, but Gabby Perea and the team did not know that. That made Gabby Perea’s hit on her unique beam routine (see embedded below) particularly special.
Arguably, the gymnasts performed a little bit safer to ensure the team’s advancement when they had to perform after a fall. Cal’s final scores in those two meets with falls were 197.8 and 197.7125 unlike the regional final when they earned 198.275 while hitting on all 24 routines. It is possible that the mindset in the championship final will be different and that every gymnast will opt for the maximum points regardless of what had happened before in the rotation, but it is hard to ignore the correlation between having a mistake and slightly lower scores to follow.
The NCAA individual national champions were decided in the two semifinal sessions on Thursday. Cal came close but did not add to their lone NCAA individual title won by Maya Bordas on bars in 2021.
Mya Lauzon was tied for the best beam score of the first session with a 9.95, but it was eventually surpassed in the second session. Her all-around score of 39.6375 was close behind that of the NCAA champion: LSU’s Haleigh Byrant (39.7125). She tied for third on beam and fourth on all-around and vault. eMjae Frazier had the highest floor exercise score of 9.9375 for a while, but that title was won by another LSU Tiger, Aleah Finnegan (9.9625). Lauzon earned NCAA nationals all-american first-team honors for All-Around, Vault, and Beam. eMjae Frazier earned first-team honor for Floor and second-team honor for All-Around. Maddie Williams earned second-team honors for All-Around and Vault. Andi Li earned second-team honor for Bars. Gabby Perea also earned second-team honor for Bars.
Rotation 1: California on Balance Beam
Utah - Vault, Florida - Bars, LSU - Floor
In the championship final, Cal will open on the balance beam which may be both a curse and a blessing. The balance beam is the one apparatus that can doom a team regardless of their lead. Cal may find themselves in a great position by opening strong on the beam, where they are ranked 2nd in the nation. More importantly, the beam is also the one apparatus where even untrained eyes can see the wobbles for deduction. Should the judges be hesitant to give out high scores early in a meet, they would be hard-pressed to do so if the Cal Bears perform up to their high ability in the first rotation.
Andi Li replaced Maddie Williams as the leadoff in the semifinal. Mya Lauzon with her regular season 10s is the most reliable beam performer on the team. I thought her 9.95 in the semifinal was as good as her 10s in the regular season. eMjae Frazier has had some great beam routines but also a few where she was clearly fighting to stay on; she is athletic enough to avoid a fall (a score of 9.3 or less) but the sometimes visible tentativeness is the difference between a 9.8 or a 9.9. Ella Cesario is seeking redemption from her semifinal fall (even though Cal had such a big lead on Stanford for second that they could have counted the fall and still advanced). Gabby Perea’s unique beam routine, particularly the dismount will close out the rotation.
Looking at the national qualifying score (NQS) of the regular season scores, Cal got four above 9.9+ by Mya Lauzon (9.965), eMjae Frazier (9.955), Gabby Perea (9.930), and Maddie Williams (9.920).
Utah is ranked 7th on vault. Florida is ranked 10th on bars. LSU is ranked 1st on floor.
Rotation 2: California on Floor
LSU - Vault, Utah - Bars, Florida - Beam
Floor exercise is the rotation where Cal Bears get to showcase their personalities. By design, Cal gymnasts opt for a combination skill at the end of their two passes in favor of three passes in the routine. Like great parkour performers, the best gymnasts can redirect the forces in their landing so that they are seemingly defying the laws of physics. Maddie Williams, Jordan Kane, and Ella Cesario generally go first. The generally higher-scoring routines by Kyen Mayhew, Mya Lauzon, and eMjae Frazier would follow. Frazier has two career 10s on the floor and Lauzon has come very close. Bears are ranked 3rd on floor exercise, five of the six floor routines have an NQS of 9.9+, led by Frazier (9.960) and Lauzon (9.955).
LSU is ranked 2nd on vault. Utah is ranked 6th on bars. Florida is ranked 3rd on beam.
Rotation 3: California on Vault
LSU - Bars, Utah - Beam, Florida - Floor
Cal has four vaults with 10.0 start values but will generally open and close the rotation with two vaults of only 9.95 start values (Yurchenko full). Maddie Williams does her Yurchenko full well enough to earn a second-team All-American honor in the semifinal. Freshman Kyen Mayhew follows with a Yurchenko 1.5. eMjae Frazier does the more difficult (but no extra points) Yurchenko double. Then Mya Lauzon and Jayden Silvers follow with their Yurchenko 1.5. Of course, Lauzon earned a perfect 10 by sticking her landing for her Regional Final vault. Silvers could land in her semifinal attempt. Ella Cesario would close the rotation with a Yurchenko full. In addition to the landing where a step or hop would be obvious, judges also pay a lot of attention to the heights achieved in the vaults. By ranking, the vault is Cal’s weakest event at 6th. Only two Cal gymnasts have individual NQS above 9.9 and they are, of course, Lauzon (9.935) and Frazier (9.910).
LSU is ranked 3rd on bars. Utah is ranked 5th on beam. Florida is ranked 9th on floor.
Rotation 4: California on Bars
Florida - Vault, LSU - Beam, Utah - Floor
Cal gets to close out the meet in arguably their best apparatus, the uneven bars. There have already been multiple meets this year where the Golden Bears not only hit on all of their bars routines but everyone scored 9.9 or better. That was nearly the case in the semifinal, when the Bears scored 49.525 counting five scores all 9.9+. Mya Lauzon will generally lead off this rotation, followed by Ella Cesario and Andi Li. eMjae Frazier, Gabby Perea, and Maddie Williams round out the rotation. Bears can easily improve upon that semifinal score by earning some 9.925+ scores. Four Cal Bears have bars NQS greater than that, led by Williams (9.96) and Frazier (9.96) and followed by Perea (9.95) and Li (9.93).
Florida is ranked 3rd on vault. LSU is ranked 3rd on beam. Utah is ranked 4th on floor. This championship final could be decided by a fantastic finish with every team confident about the final rotation and the lead shifting with each routine performed.
No matter the outcome today, Cal Women’s Gymnastics has already clinched a successful season by advancing to the championship final. Perhaps, the freedom from any expectation beyond that will allow the Golden Bears to unleash their best en route to making more history. If not, this will serve as a great experience when almost the entire squad should be back next year with more talent added, highlighted by British champion and a potential Paris 2024 Olympic medalist Ondine Achampong.
Of course, many more future gymnastics greats may be inspired to join the program from watching this 2024 team perform in the national championship today. Cal women’s gymnastics does have the core value of joy; that joy in their performances is rather contagious!
NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championship Final
No.3 Cal vs. No.2 LSU vs. No.4 Florida vs. No.5 Utah
Where: Dickies Arena (Fort Worth, Texas)
When: April 20th, 1 PM PT
TV: ABC (pre-show starts at 12:30 PM PT)
Online: ESPN+
GO BEARS!
The announcers, particularly the women, were VERY partial to LSU. Probably because they were SEC network reporters. However, towards the end they were giving a lot of positives to the Cal performances. Cal came in second in the Nation which was GREAT! Go Bears!
This was a ton of fun to watch! It takes a bit of getting used to the scoring process to REALLY know how your team is doing at any given point. Cal was great and earned 2nd place, but I can’t say LSU didn’t deserve the win.