Cal Women's Gymnastics at NCAA Championships Preview

No.4 Golden Bears have believed all season long that they are good enough to make it to the final session AKA "Four on the Floor"

California Golden Bears are ready to make more history this week at nationals!

Just like they have done since the Howells (co-head coaches Justin Howell and Liz Crandall-Howell) took over the program in 2013, Cal Bears have steadily improved every year (or daily via their “one day better” motto). They are closer than ever to the summit of collegiate gymnastics in 2023.

On Thursday, Cal will look to make the final session of the NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championships for the first time in program history. This is Cal’s 5th trip to the NCAA Championships as a team and they have yet to make it to “Day 2”. Golden Bears came the closest in 2016, back when the final session was the “Super Six” with six teams but the Bears finished 7th. NCAA has since reduced the postseason field in 2019, culminating in the “Four on the Floor”.

This year, No.4 Cal Bears (via combining the Team NQS with the regional final scores) have a decent chance to be one of the last four teams, performing on national TV (ABC) to what will likely be another record-breaking TV audience. ESPN moved the championship final to national TV only in 2021.

If you are only paying attention to Cal Women’s Gymnastics this week because they are back in the NCAA Championships, you have missed out on another highly entertaining season.

Here is a quick summary of the new records accomplished in 2023 so far:

• 1st Regional victory - Cal won the Pittsburgh Regional with a program postseason-best, program road-best team score of 198.075

• New record high team scores: 198.100 (March 10th) and then 198.275 (March 12th)

• Record high beam score: 49.825 (March 12th) shattering the previous record of 49.525 (2022 Regional Final)

• Record high floor score: 49.700 (March 3rd)

• Regular season Pac-12 co-champions for the second consecutive year

Individually:

• First perfect-10 on Floor Exercise: freshman eMjae Frazier (March 3rd)

• First perfect-10 on Balance Beam: sophomore Mya Lauzon (March 12th)

• Highest all-around score: 39.750 by eMjae Frazier (Pittsburgh Regional Final)

The best may be yet to come!

This week is a special opportunity for Cal Women’s Gymnastics to shine on the national stage.

By the way, all of the NCAA individual championship titles (for the four apparatuses and all-around) will be decided solely by the performances in the semifinals on Thursday. Maya Bordas won the program’s first NCAA championship of any kind on bars back in 2021. While Cal will hopefully be fighting hard for the team to make it to Saturday, they will also be battling for individual glory, possibly even between themselves within the same rotation.

While it is least likely to happen on vault, Cal got multiple candidates capable of claiming the national championships for every event. Both of Cal’s perfect-10 earners this season, Mya Lauzon and eMjae Frazier, can clinch an NCAA title by replicating a perfect routine. With the tougher judging at the nationals (four rather than two judges looking for mistakes), the winners will likely score less than perfection. Cal’s best bet may again come on bars where both Maddie Williams and Andi Li are good candidates, but it may be specialists Gabby Perea or Ella Cesario that get it. Williams, Li, and Perea have all earned 9.975 this season, those are routines that earned a perfect-10 from one of the two judges.

NCAA will award championship titles to all gymnasts who tie for the top scores. It is plausible and would be cool for Cal Bears to share a championship title or even for eMjae Frazier to possibly share a title with her older sister Margzetta Frazier of UCLA Bruins.

---

NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championship

Where: Dickie Center (Fort Worth, TX)

NCAA Semifinals

When: Thursday, April 13th, 12 PM PT (Session 1)

TV: ESPN2

NCAA Championship Final

When: Saturday, April 15th, 1 PM PT

TV: ABC

Online: ESPN+ will have individual streams for each apparatus

https://twitter.com/ESPNPR/status/1645909267390816256

---

Before they traveled to Fort Worth (the same site as 2021, when Cal finished 3rd in their semifinal and 7th overall), Cal head coach Liz Crandall-Howell, senior Nevaeh DeSouza, and freshman eMjae Frazier spoke to the press on Monday.

Understandably, the team is “super excited” for this week where they expected teams to perform at high levels.

Even though it was just two seasons ago, only Nevaeh DeSouza and Andi Li are left in Cal’s lineup this year. It is worth mentioning how crazy that NCAA semifinal was as the entire Cal team was pulled off the floor during warm-up due to some COVID protocol reasons only for them to be allowed to compete in the end. DeSouza said that her advice to her younger teammates is “to enjoy the moments”.

While Cal does not have the precedence of making it to “Four on the Floor”, that was the goal that the team set for themselves before the season. DeSouza said that they “knew since the beginning of the season that [Cal is] good enough to make Day 2”. DeSouza, the lone Cal senior to be in the lineup (which bodes well for the program’s near future), does lead by example. She is firmly placed as the leadoff on three of the four rotations for the Cal lineup regular since her first meet as a freshman.

The coaches also planned accordingly with both more competitions against top-level teams (the season-opening Super 16 tournament, a trip to fellow semifinal session I team LSU) and more competitions on podiums. It turns out that in venues with a raised podium, the apparatuses have different bounces. Past Cal teams had to make more of a late season adjustments for the podiums of the postseason, but this year’s Cal team is much better prepared.

https://twitter.com/CalWGym/status/1644839596197552128

Coming off a great season, particularly posting the top regional final score, does Cal feel the burden of expectation?

Liz Crandall-Howell explained that she does want her team to feel pressure since “pressure is a privilege” and “care means having passion”. One of the team’s core values is joy, and Cal will want to perform well just for each other and their fans and family. In the best case scenario, the team is just connected to one another and their fans/family. They do not pay attention to the score until the end.

The two best rotations for Cal this year turned out to be the extremely tough balance beam and uneven bars. The secret to their successes there may be the team’s distraction drills. During certain practices, Bears will perform while the rest of the team attempts to distract them (it is too bad gymnastics is a classy sports where teams don’t attempt this during meets against their opponents). Cal “loves to compete in a loud environment” and has the track record to back it up.

In case you missed it, Cal’s Pittsburgh Regional Final winning performance is up in the link below. Cal really took control of the meet in the beam rotation.

Gymnastics is such a mental thing, Cal does credit working with a sports psychologist. eMjae Frazier just naturally talked about focusing on her breathing during her routines to avoid distractions. Breathing exercises are apparently a key part of what the team does. It is true that I am finalizing this post after watching the latest episode of Ted Lasso, but I did get a sense of the strong bond within the program.

Mental toughness is particularly important in women’s gymnastics with every top team basically capable of scoring the maximum 200 points in a meet (they don’t because I do not think every team, including Cal, got 5 vaults with starting value of 10.0). This kind of scoring is all about perfection, rather than tougher skills for an uncapped high starting value (like the current Olympic scoring or how scoring is done for NCAA men’s gymnastics). Nonetheless, it was revealed that the team does regularly practice tougher skills (which do not earn gymnasts any bonus points) in addition to the regular routines.

It turned out that the decision to hold eMjae Frazier out of vault at the Regional Semifinal was a strategic one to save her legs for the regional final as her powerful vault would also cause more stress on landing. Competing in all four events in the regional final, Frazier set a new Cal program all-time all-around score. I expect she will do the all-around on Thursday (and hopefully, Saturday).

eMjae, of course, would love to get to a dream final session where she may again compete in the same session as her sister Margzetta. It is certainly plausible for both Cal and UCLA to make the Four of the Floor. One would expect both Cal and UCLA to root for one another thanks to not just the Frazier sisters but how UCLA first-year head coach Janelle McDonald was Cal’s assistant coach.

https://twitter.com/CalWGym/status/1645485421043015680

If Cal can score close to what they did in the Pittsburgh Regional Final (AKA over 198), it is hard to imagine that they will not advance out of Semifinal I. The top two teams out of No.3 Florida, No.4 Cal, No.6 LSU, and No.8 Denver will make it to Saturday. Golden Bears does not necessarily require mistakes from other teams to advance.

It is unclear if Florida superstar Trinity Thomas will be able to go on Thursday. Thomas, a 5th-year chasing the NCAA all-time record for most 10s in a collegiate career (she is one short with one or two meets to go), got hurt in the regional semifinal and did not compete in Florida’s second-place finish in the regional final behind Cal. Denver Pioneers used their home court en route to a surprise win (197.875) in the Denver Regional. LSU was able to advance ahead of Michigan, the 2021 NCAA champions, via tiebreaker rules after both scored 197.750. Cal was edged by LSU down at Baton Rouge 197.700 to 197.675 after a late scoring change in a meet where the Howells were unable to attend in person.

Photo Credit: CalBears.com, David Hague

Should Cal advance to Saturday, I will surely write more about that matchup. No.1 Oklahoma, No.2 Utah, No.5 UCLA, and No. 7 Kentucky are on the other side of the bracket. Oklahoma easily won their regional despite counting an early fall on beams (this was also how Cal was able to barely outscore them). One would expect another tightly-contest between the two Pac-12 (for now) rivals for the other final berth.

Expect a high level of gymnastics in all three sessions this week. I do not want to get too far ahead, but a potential national championship final appearance by Cal can have a drastic impact on the up-and-coming program. In the era of NILs (and gymnasts do have some of the biggest deals between USA Olympian Suni Lee and LSU’s Livvy Dunne - a beam specialist who will bring some national attention to the Cal semifinal session), being on national TV on the weekend will be some major exposure to the deserving Cal Bears. College gymnastics is booming nationally (thanks to NILs, ESPN investing the TV time, and routines short enough to go viral online), it is great that Cal fans got a special team to take advantage of this tide that is lifting the sport.

ROLL ON YOU BEARS!