Jordan Chiles wins two titles, but UCLA fails to reach NCAA championship final

Until the end, Janelle McDonald kept dancing.

As she walked down the stairs after UCLA’s final bar routine, with hopes of advancing to the NCAA finals fading with every stuck landing by Utah’s beam lineup, the first-year Bruin coach extended her arms over her head.

“Y-M-C-A,” she spelled out to the music.

McDonald brought the Bruins back to the national stage by rekindling the program’s joyful dynamic and her work persisted even as the season ended Thursday with a third-place finish at the NCAA semifinals at Dickies Arena.

“We wouldn’t be where we are right now if it wasn’t for her,” said sophomore Jordan Chiles, who won individual titles on floor and bars.

As the Bruins squandered a two-rotation lead, Pac-12 rival Utah finished with a session-winning 198.225, edging out defending champion Oklahoma, who had a 198.1625. UCLA’s 197.9125 was third among the eight semifinalists across both semifinals, but Louisiana State and Florida will join the Utes and Sooners in Saturday’s national final.

LSU won the first semifinal with a 197.475 while Florida advanced with a 197.4.

The disappointment was raw Thursday, but just reaching nationals as a team for the first time since 2019 seemed like a reward after McDonald inherited a team with a broken culture.

“When we started this thing in September and we started to come together as a team, I don’t think anybody in that room thought we would be here,” McDonald said. “They wanted to be, but I don’t think we were the team yet that could be here. So I think they know the work that’s been put in culturally and gymnastically to be able to have the opportunity to compete here. … They’re having joy doing gymnastics again and these are the things I’m most proud of.”

Chiles became UCLA’s first individual national champion since Kyla Ross in 2019 and won the program’s first bars crown since 2016. She did it with a perfect 10 that punctuated UCLA’s meet with an exciting finish.

But the elation from Chiles’ score was quickly clouded by disappointment. Utah’s Maile O’Keefe scored her own 10 on beam, which pushed Utah past UCLA on the scoreboard.

UCLA gymnasts standing in the corral near the bars fell into each other’s arms in long hugs. Freshman Selena Harris, who earned a sixth-place finish in the all-around, walked out of the corral and sat by herself with her head buried in her knees. But fifth-year senior Margzetta Frazier walked over, put her hand on Harris’ shoulder and brought her back into the corral with her teammates.

With the Bruins standing together, even in sadness, they felt stronger.

“I feel like we have a really strong foundation with no cracks,” Frazier said, noting how UCLA used a metaphor of a trampoline during her freshman year. “If there’s threads that are loose in a trampoline, you’re going to have a hole. … But if all the threads are tight and intact and every single member of that team is ready to go, we’re going to have a strong, solid foundation and that’s just little details like having grace when you have an unexpected outcome.”

The disappointment confirmed to Chiles just how badly her teammates wanted to win the program’s eighth national championship. But as the Olympic silver medalist leaves college to train for the 2024 Olympics next year, Chiles knows the Bruins are in good hands with “The Janelle McDonald, aka Young Nelly.”

“She has definitely put the word ‘intention’ into our brains,” Chiles said. “I’m going to take that away. Definitely going to use that in my daily life because that was something that was able to help me in my gymnastics.”

With the best postseason floor rotation in program history, UCLA raced out to a lead after two rotations. Emma Malabuyo fought through technical difficulties when her music cut out for 10 seconds, but kept dancing and tumbling to a 9.8875. The Bruins finished with four consecutive scores of 9.9 or better, capped by Chiles’ NCAA-title-winning 9.9875.

It gave UCLA a 49.7125 on the event and a 0.1875-point lead on second-place Oklahoma going into the third rotation.

But the Bruins “got tight” on vault, McDonald said, and totaled just 49.175 points, allowing the Utes and Sooners to jump ahead. Sitting in third place, McDonald gathered her team and told them that they trained for this exact moment, to focus on their details and fight for every tenth in the final event.

McDonald smiled when she added afterward that they did.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.