Utah (196.625)
defeats
Minnesota (195.475)
Iowa (194.825)

Utah won’t be raising a banner about this score (the team’s lowest season opener since 2020), but it was a perfectly solid 24-for-24 performance that put the team in 3rd nationally. The landings said, “Hello, my name is January 2nd,” particularly on vault, but vault was also the loosest-scored event of the day so you couldn’t really tell.

Ella Zirbes made her all-around debut at 39.350, adding a compelling beam option, and Avery Neff continued separating herself from other top gymnasts through noteworthy composition choices like the DLO 1/1 on bars, the aerial 2-feet + Shushunova on beam (don’t shift that footttttt), and botching her first pass on floor and still starting from a 10.

Minnesota and Iowa took the loss here and found that beam was…acting like kind of a beam. It was the lowest rotation score for both teams, but also probably their highest-potential event this season. Minnesota is plenty deep on beam (when Emma Slevin is your #8, you have some strong options) and the lowest scores this time came from some of their best-quality beamers like Stewart and Rowray.

Iowa will take some heart that this meet’s 194 was built more on “so I almost fell on a full turn” rather than on “my routine is bad.” The overall execution is sound, particularly on beam. More concerning would be the early parts of the vault and floor lineups looking under-powered compared to the national standard, but having JerQuavia Henderson back in the all-around is a win in that department, and also every department.

The new NQS system that allows for only one dropped score means Minnesota and Iowa are a little more up against it by already having to deal with low totals, but every team is going to find itself counting scores that wouldn’t have been tolerated during NQS 1.0. We’ll have to wait to see how that actually shakes out and whether an opening 194 is actually an alarm bell or not.

Oshkosh (192.100)
defeats
Winona State (189.575)
Stout (184.950)
Greenville (184.700)

UW-O was far from UW-Zero with this record-breaking opening meet result of 192.100, continuing to erode the barriers between DI and DIII by outscoring DI teams Temple and Iowa State in the first week.

Last season, Winona State finished behind Stout in the rankings so will relish opening the 2026 season with a 4.5 point advantage. Stout won’t love it, putting up its lowest team score since the COVID-abbreviated DIII season in 2021. Taylar Schaefer injured her left knee on her beam dismount in the very first rotation, which sort of took the air out of the whole performance. Greenville finished last here with 184.700, also a lower opening-meet score than in 2024 or 2025 as the team adapts without record-setter Ashlie Leage, who transferred to DI Northern Illinois.

UCLA (196.975)
defeats
Cal (196.000)
Washington (195.625)
Oregon State (195.550)

UCLA secured the top national ranking in week one with this 196.975, unleashing Ashlee Sullivan, Nola Matthews, and Tiana Sumanasekera upon the college world for the first time. All three showed three hit lineup routines as part of UCLA’s restructured squad, but the star of the meet was a scrappy unknown named Jordan Chiles who emerged from anonymity to go 39.725 AA with a near-stick on a DTY and the lone 9.975 of the weekend on beam.

In a rare development, floor was UCLA’s lowest-scoring event—the first time that has happened since 2022—as some under-rotations, OOBs, and rogue knee angles conspired to keep this from being a big old meet score.

Placing second here and scoring 196 were both big victories for a Cal roster that was supposed to be putting up an old tire and a tumbleweed in the 1-2 spots on floor to fill out a lineup. In reality, the team looked fairly complete, and Tonya Paulsson provided the highlight with a debut 9.925 on bars. But then the news of a partial re-ACL tear for Ondine Achampong ruined everything. No thank you, and also don’t.

After missing their own regionals last season, Washington will take the victories as they come, and beating Oregon State in the season opener is a victory. It took until February last season for Washington to start breaking the 195.5 barrier, so this is a much healthier start. Literally, because Deiah Moody was back getting 9.8s and Lily Tubbs finally did a beam routine and it was glorious.

Oregon State’s performance was pretty similar to Washington’s but victimized by the higher expectations of previous results. There was a lot of…waiting for Jade Carey to come save the floor rotation score and then realizing she was in some dress over by beam. Camryn Richardson, who joined Oregon State this season after a false start at UCLA, looks like an absolutely necessary addition on vault and bars who can hopefully add in a fully competitive floor score soon.

Western Michigan (194.450)
defeats
Wilberforce (137.975)

Western Michigan is coming off a dip in 2025. After making regionals in 2023 and coming close in 2024, WMU was off the pace in 2025 at 47th in the country, and that was with a season average of 195.042. So, this 194.450 will need to be only a starting point if Western is to make it back to regionals in 2026. For a first-week score, though, it does compare favorably to the results from peer teams like Towson, Iowa State, and Temple. Freshman Casey Mooney provided some necessary restocking of lineups, debuting with an AA performance and top-three scores on three events.

Wilberforce was not able to field a full team, competing just four athletes on each event.

Clemson (196.150)
defeats
Towson (193.550)

Clemson dominated the season opener against Towson, and while a 196.150 isn’t going to blow the nation’s socks off, it’s a very useful start for the new Crandall-Howellification of the gymnastics program. With no counting falls, six 10.0 vaults, and an entire Emma Malewski that can still One Day Better these lineups when she’s ready, the hype train should only gain speed.

Towson was not able to get close to Clemson with a 193.550, the team’s lowest score in almost 6 years. Beam was the biggest adventure, as the lineup still looks a little cobbled together as they work to replace the scores from Clara Hong and company.

Rutgers (195.400)
defeats
Temple (191.350)
Brockport (189.100)

Rutgers is still riding high after bursting through the floor at the end of last season to take the last spot at regionals, and this first-meet victory showed there’s a lot to like about Rutgers’ chances to keep it up.

Emily Leese is back after missing last season and immediately 9.9-ed again on vault, Gabrielle Dildy added bars for her senior season and got the lineup’s top score, and Delaney Adrian continued as one of the best-kept form secrets. Except for a minor balance beam situation in there, this was a solid opener for Rutgers and ultimately an easy win over the major balance beam situation suffered by Temple. Three straight misses in the middle of the beam lineup, coming right after a counting miss on bars, put this one in the “pretend it never happened” pile for Temple. Though it was an improvement on last season’s opening 191.200.

It wouldn’t have been out of the question for DIII Brockport to defeat Temple here, but a visit to Rutgers was always going to be more about the score than the win. Brockport’s typical trajectory is to start with a couple high 180s before moving into the 190+ range for the rest of the season, so this looks about on par. Kiara Hockman, the program record holder on vault, was the star again with top-5 event results on three pieces.

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Missouri (196.850)
defeats
Iowa State (191.325)

The final meet of the weekend proved no contest as Missouri beat Iowa State by 11 falls. Missouri frolicked through 3/4 of a strong meet that— even accounting for the looseness of the scoring—was the best first-meet showing in the nation up until a counting fall on beam. That dropped Missouri’s score just behind UCLA’s and compromised what would have been a mid-197.

Overall, this year’s roster looks quite able to replace the lost scores from last season, both with new stars like Kimarra Echols (who is already in the all-around) and injury comebacks like Lauren Macpherson, who transferred from San Jose, missed last season, and came back here with a very strong 9.900 in the second spot on beam.

Iowa State, meanwhile, had to count three scores under 9.1 and recorded its lowest team total in over 25 years. We…OK?

The Real Winner

Kaliya Lincoln – Introductions
SV: 10
J1: 9.500
J2: 10.000