Cal Sports Report

Cal Advances to NCAA Gymnastics Finals for First Time in School History

Third-ranked Bears finish second to LSU in Thursday's semifinal to qualify for Sunday's four-team finals
Jake Curtis|

Cal has advanced to the finals of the NCAA women’s gymnastics championships for the first time in school history.

The third-ranked Golden Bears qualified for Saturday’s finals based on Cal’s second-place finish in the semifinals on Thursday afternoon in Fort Worth, Texas.

And Cal's chances to become national champions improved when top-ranked Oklahoma failed to reach the finals. The Sooners finished third in their four-team semifinal Thursday night.

The first- and second-place team finishers in each of the two four-team semifinals advance to the finals on Saturday.  Second-ranked LSU finished first in the afternoon semifinal and Cal was second, so those two will advance, while the other two teams in that semifinal – Stanford and Arkansas – were eliminated.

Cal and LSU will join the top two finishers of the evening four-team semifinal: Utah and Florida. Oklahoma is the No. 1-ranked gymnastics team in the country, but the Sooners finished third behind Utah, the surprising first-place finisher in that semifinal, and second-place Florida, in the evening session.

Oklahoma was the national champion in 2023 and 2022 and won the title six times in the past 10 years. But there will be new champion this year.

It will be Cal, LSU, Utah and Florida in Saturday's final, which starts at 1 p.m. Pacific time and can be viewed on ABC.

LSU finished the four rotations of the afternoon semifinal with a score of 198.1125, which was 0.4000 ahead of Cal’s score of 197.7125. The Bears finished 0.6000 ahead of third-place Stanford, which had an overall score of 197.0750.  No. 10 Arkansas was fourth at 196.4750.

Cal had the lead after one rotation, but LSU took over on the second.

The Golden Bears’ top individual score of the day was provided by Mya Lauzon, who scored 9.95 on the beam.

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.