Cal Women's Gymnastics: Maya Bordas Wins NCAA Co-Title in Uneven Parallel Bars
After nearly being pulled from the competition before it started for concerns related to COVID-19, the Cal women’s gymnastics team’s finest season ended with a narrow miss at the NCAA Championships on Friday at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas.
The Bears finished third in their four-team semifinal group — a mere 0.075 points behind runner-up Florida — to barely miss out on advancing to the finals for the first time in program history. The Gators join semifinal group winner Michigan in Saturday’s four-team championship round.
The news was better for Maya Bordas, a junior from Austin, Texas, who shared the national title in the uneven parallel bars with Utah’s Maile O’Keefe. Each of them scored 9.9500 points.
Bordas is Cal's first individual event NCAA champion.
“I think that’s one of the best bar routines that Maya has ever done,” co-head coach Elisabeth Crandall-Howell said. “She’s been working really hard on body posture on her landing of her dismount. Everything else on the interior of the bar routine has been fantastic and sometimes the thing that can get inconsistent with her is the body posture on the landing.
"That was by far the best dismount that she’s ever done. Her bar routine was beautiful and she capped it off with total ownership and control of the landing.”
Fifth-ranked in the nation, Cal got a scare 70 minutes before the competition was scheduled to begin. The Bears were pulled off the floor during warmups before being cleared to compete after a 42-minute delay.
Despite the last-second upheaval, Cal assembled the second-best rotation of the four schools in their semifinal group in both the balance beam and uneven parallel bars. The Bears finished fourth in both the floor exercise and vault, and wound up with a score of 197.3625.
Co-head coach Justin Howell explained the COVID-19 issue involved “a couple” of Cal athletes that was sorted out by NCAA, school and health officials without requiring additional testing.
“It was crazy, to be honest with you,” he said. “We basically had about 20 minutes to get out on the floor with our entire team and get everything warmed up while the other teams had already finished the formal part of our warmup.
“I have to tell you, our team is prepared for scenarios like this . . . if there was a team that could handle that kind of stop and start and adversity that we had today, our Bears were the team that could do it.”
Howell talks in the video below about the team's reaction to falling short of reaching the finals:
Crandall-Howell wasn’t surprised the team responded well to a sudden change in the minutes before the meet began.
“We’ve had an attitude of gratitude all the way through this,” she said. “Being able to do our sports during a global pandemic has been a huge blessing. Every single day we know that anything can happen. And every single day we talk about, `We get to do this today.’
“I’ve been totally in awe of them the entire season. They were so excite that they got to be out there. They locked in when they got out there. They were in their happy place.”
Six Cal athletes secured nine All-America honors, topped by Bordas.
Maya Bordas celebrates her performance with Cal bars coach Janelle McDonald.
Photo by Brendan Maloney
Kyana George (tied for second in balance beam), Nevaeh DeSouza (fourth in vault) and Alma Kuc (fourth on bars) also were first-team honorees for finishing among the top four in their semifinals. Named to the second team for placing fifth through eighth were DeSouza (tied for fifth on the beam, sixth in floor exercise and eighth in All-Around), Emi Watterson (tied for fifth on the beam) and Andi Li (seventh on bars).
Crandall-Howell talks in the video below about Bordas’ 9.9500 score in the bars.
Michigan, seeded No. 4 in the eight-team event, won the semifinals in the floor exercise, beam and bars, and was second in the vault for a score of 197.8625 points.
Florida was second in the floor exercise and third in the other three events, posting a score of 197.3625 — just 0.075 better than Cal. The Bears could have overtaken Florida in their final rotation, but only if Watterson scored the rare perfect "10" in the beam. She scored 9.9125.
Minnesota, which won the vault, was fourth overall with 197.1875 points.
Top-seeded and defending national champion Oklahoma won the other semifinal group with a score of 198.0875 with Utah advancing as the second-place team at 197.6000.
Cover photo of Kyana George by Brandan Maloney