Utah made history at the Pac-12 championships. That falls short in describing what the Red Rocks did

Utah will always be Pac-12 women’s gymnastics champions. Barring some crazy realignment in the future, the Red Rocks will forever be the last champions the conference will ever have.

In the final year of the conference, in the final gymnastics competition among the eight schools that sponsor women’s gymnastics, Utah proved itself the best, one final time.

Better than No. 2-ranked Cal, one of the favorites to contend for a national title this year.

Better than arch-rival UCLA, which had won four conference titles since the conference expanded.

Better than pesky Oregon State, led by Olympic gold medalist Jade Carey.

Better than Stanford, Arizona State, Arizona and Washington.

Led by senior Maile O’Keefe, who made program history by setting a new perfect 10 record; led by junior Grace McCallum, who tied for second in the all-around competition; led by a first year head coach in Carly Dockendorf, who took over the team late in the fall, Utah defeated all comers Saturday night at the Maverik Center in West Valley City, cementing Utah gymnastics forever as the preeminent Pac-12 gymnastics power.

Don’t believe it? Since joining the league in 2012, the Red Rocks have proven to be the team to beat, winning a Pac-12-best seven conference championships, including a record four straight from 2021-2024.

Only one other team, UCLA, won more than one conference championship during that stretch.

Fittingly, the 2024 Pac-12 championships came down to the Red Rocks and the Bruins. To the final rotation, even. As they have been wont to do, though, the Red Rocks pulled it out.

Utah finished with a 198.000, the team’s third score above a 198 this year. UCLA finished a close second with a 197.875, with Cal finishing a distant third with a 197.325.

O’Keefe was Utah’s only individual champion, on balance beam — UCLA’s Selena Harris won the all-around, uneven bars and vault titles, while Carey won the floor exercise title and tied with Harris for the bars title — but the Red Rocks were quite simply the best team.

“Just an unbelievable experience tonight,” Dockendorf said. “Just the entire program brought their best tonight. The (team) managers, our (coaching) staff and obviously the athletes. We were going to fight to the very end and that is what we did.”

Added McCallum: “Ecstatic. I mean, we are so excited. We knew we could do it, we just had to piece it together. It is an unreal feeling.”

O’Keefe put it another way.

“Pretty amazing to go back-to-back-to-back-to-back in the last ever Pac-12 championships,” she said.

Defining moment

It should have been O’Keefe’s record-breaking perfect 10. The fifth-year senior is now Utah’s record holder for perfect 10s in a career with 15 overall, surpassing the long-held record of Utah great Theresa Kulikowski.

No moment should have been able to surpass history of that ilk Saturday.

And yet... Utah doesn’t win the 2024 Pac-12 championships without a clutch beam performance from McCallum.

After one rotation, Utah was in second place, right on the heels of Oregon State and just ahead of UCLA. The Red Rocks were headed to beam, their best event the last few years, and everything pointed to Utah either taking the lead or staying in the middle of the fight.

Amelie Morgan, fresh off an excellent bars routine and a successful turn as an elite gymnast in England, was set to lead off the rotation. Always consistent, always reliable, Morgan fell while mounting the beam.

Then, sophomore Makenna Smith and freshman Elizabeth Gantner both succumbed to the pressure — completely understandable given the circumstances — and their mistake-marred routines merited Utah back-to-back scores of 9.725.

As a result, midway through the beam rotation, Utah was on the verge of collapse. Another poor routine and the Red Rocks would surely have dug a hole too deep to get out of, even with stellar floor and vault rotations to end the competition.

But up stepped McCallum, with all the pressure in the world on her shoulders, and the Olympic silver medalist delivered.

McCallum recorded a 9.925, a routine that calmed Utah down and set the stage for a 9.925 by Abby Paulson the following routine, and then O’Keefe’s capped off the rally with her perfect 10.

From there, Utah cruised, tying its season high on floor exercise with a 49.700 — a score that enabled the Red Rocks to take the lead entering the final rotation of the night. And in the final rotation, on vault, Utah tied its season-high with a 49.500.

Without McCallum’s routine though, Utah surely would have fallen into too big of a hole to climb out of.

“It was really critical,” Dockendorf said of McCallum’s routine, as well as Paulson’s and O’Keefe’s. “I feel like we have been in that position a few times this year, where we were down in a big way and then really let it rip the last half (of the lineup).

“Not an ideal start or normal for us on that event. Especially with Amelie. That may have been the first fall of her career. ... To have the back half (of the lineup) do what they did just shows you what we are capable of.”

“We’ve competed behind a fall before,” O’Keefe added. “It doesn’t do anything to our gymnastics, and the amazing thing about our sport is there is no offense and defense. What other people do doesn’t directly impact our gymnastics.”

Standout routines

No routine was more spectacular Friday night than O’Keefe’s perfect offering on beam.

It can be debated whether it was one of the 15 best routines of O’Keefe’s Utah career, but what cannot be debated is that O’Keefe was awarded a perfect score and became the program record holder as a result.

Throw in the stakes, and the routine surely is one of the more important ones of O’Keefe’s career.

The fifth-year senior admitted that, having been stuck on 14 perfect 10s for weeks now, the pressure to break the record had gotten to her a little bit.

“There has been that talk of, ‘Oh, she’s tied, she’s tied with Theresa’ and I feel like I just needed to turn into business mode,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about (that record) way too much. I was just glad. It was stressful, of course. It was nice to be able to switch into business mode. It was a good routine and I was hoping for the max (score).”

Per Dockendorf, O’Keefe may have undersold how much the pressure of breaking the record had been affecting her.

“She has been wanting that last 10 for weeks now. We talked this week that maybe the expectation was too high for her,” Dockendorf said. “Just that she was putting so much pressure on herself to get a 10 every single meet.

“I told her last Friday night, after the (Stanford/Utah State) meet, I said, ‘You are going to get a 10 when it counts the most.’ She did that tonight. It was a really special moment and she is capable of a 10 every single time.”

Beyond O’Keefe’s history making, plenty of Red Rocks had performances of note.

Paulson competed arguably the best meet of her career, given the stakes, with two scores above 9.925, on beam and floor.

Freshman Camie Winger nailed a key vault to lead off Utah’s lineup, a lineup that sealed the win.

Senior Jaedyn Rucker had two strong performances, on floor and vault.

Senior Jaylene Gilstrap tied her career high on floor for the second consecutive week.

And no Red Rock was better than McCallum, who had an excellent all-around performance again, scoring above a 9.90 on every single event.

Adjustments to make

The clear and obvious area that Utah must shore up entering the NCAA portion of the postseason is beam. Three scores under a 9.80 will be a recipe for disaster when the stakes are raised even higher.

And beyond beam, there were things on bars that need improvement — O’Keefe only had a 9.80 and Utah counted a 9.850 from Alani Sabado — and on vault too. Winger was the only Red Rock to stick her vault, though Rucker came close. Otherwise there were steps forward — an improvement to what had been steps backward — and bounces forward on landings, all deductions that will need to be cleaned up if Utah is to contend for a nationals berth and a national championship.

“We probably should score better on beam next time,” Dockendorf said with a smile. “We will continue with the progress that we have been making, continue to challenge them with stuck landings. Really at this point, moving forward, it really comes down to the details. Everyone is really good at gymnastics in a regionals environment and it will come down to who is hitting their handstands, who have a pointed toe, who can hold the stick a little bit cleaner.

“That is really what we are going to be focusing on.”

The takeaway

Gymnasts and Dockendorf noted after the meet that Utah’s performance said something about the 2024 Red Rocks. After an autumn filled with uncertainty, capped by the departure of former head coach Tom Farden, Utah could have crumbled and no one would have batted an eye.

After consistently hitting scores in the 197.6 to 197.8 range during the majority of the year — while their chief competition was scoring 198s — Utah could have accepted that 2024 wasn’t its year. There is always next year, especially with a highly touted freshman class incoming, after all.

After losing at Cal and not winning the regular season conference title for the first time ever, Utah could’ve accepted its place as a good, even great team, but not a contender this year.

Through it all, though, the Red Rocks never lost belief. Never gave up, and now they will enter the postseason a conference champion and one of the hottest teams in the country.

“To get a 198 at Pac-12 championships is just huge,” Dockendorf said, noting that she believes her team is peaking, reaching its best possible form at the best possible time, “and that was with a pretty subpar beam rotation tonight.”

Meaning there is still a ways for Utah to go, starting in two weeks at NCAA Regionals.