UCLA's rivalry with Utah levels up at NCAA gymnastics championships

Their teams celebrated, jumping, hugging and crying. Scores from the NCAA regional final flashed on the screen with two Pac-12 rivals at the top, right next to each other as they have been for decades. Utah’s Tom Farden found his UCLA counterpart near the vault runway and reached to shake Janelle McDonald’s hand.

“See you at nationals,” the Utah coach said with a nod.

The West’s premier college gymnastics programs can’t get away from each other this postseason as Thursday’s NCAA championship semifinal will be the third time in the last month that the Pac-12 rivals have competed in the same session. The No. 5 Utes are undefeated against the No. 4 Bruins this season, winning their regular-season dual meet, taking first in the Pac-12 championships and winning the NCAA regional final over the Bruins, who needed a comeback to seal their national championship appearance.

But with only two teams advancing from a stacked national semifinal that also includes No. 1 Oklahoma and No. 9 Kentucky, the latest iteration of college gymnastics’ best rivalry reaches new heights in Fort Worth.

“Bring it on,” McDonald said. “Our team loves to win, they love to compete, they love to show up in those big moments. So to be able to meet a team like Utah so frequently, it just helps us be better.”

The Bruins have lost eight consecutive meets to Utah, with their last victory in the series coming at the 2019 Pac-12 championship. But when the stakes are the highest in NCAA championship competition, UCLA has a five-meet winning streak over their conference rivals. It includes the 2018 NCAA final where the Bruins won their seventh national championship, which ranks third in the country.

The Utes are tied for first with 10 NCAA titles.

The rivalry begins even before gymnasts choose sides. Utah senior Abby Paulson remembers the whispers during the recruitment process about visiting one school over the other.

But having trained alongside many UCLA gymnasts during national team camps or elite competitions, Paulson still gets excited when she sees a Bruin deliver a strong routine, even if her team is competing at the same time. In a sport void of defense, this rivalry has room for cross-team cheering.

“You want them to do their best because it’s not the same as going head-to-head,” Paulson said. “We wish what’s best for them. We want to see them succeed.”

UCLA sophomore Ana Padurariu’s boyfriend, Bruins soccer player Tommy Silva, often teases the former Canadian team member about the lack of obvious competitiveness in her sport. She’s so nice to everyone, even her supposed rivals.

To Padurariu, who befriended gymnasts from all over the world during her elite career, that’s the beautiful part of the sport.

“Gymnastics is one of those sports where everybody knows how hard it’s been to get to the level that you are,” Padurariu said. “You just have a new level of respect for everyone that’s competing with you.”

But when asked if the annual regular-season dual meet with Utah feels different than other competitions, Padurariu giggled in the affirmative.

“Against Stanford or Cal, it feels much more friendly and it feels like the audience is also cheering for us and it’s a lot more interconnected," the beam and bars specialist said. "But with Utah, it feels very rivalry, honestly.”

The dedicated fan bases, two of the most vocal within gymnastics-obsessed internet circles, mark their calendars for the regular-season marquee matchup. Each time the Utes have competed at UCLA since joining the Pac-12, the meet has brought UCLA its best home crowd of the season. Utah saves its best leotard for the rivalry dual meet, said Paulson, who scored a 10 on beam as a freshman to seal Utah’s win in Pauley Pavilion in 2020 that ended a five-meet UCLA winning streak in the series. The meets are often broadcast on ESPN networks, with Thursday's semifinal set to air at 6 p.m. PDT on ESPN2. Even before McDonald made the transition to college coaching, the meets were appointment viewing.

Farden hopes to continue the rivalry when UCLA moves to the Big Ten. While the coaches haven’t finalized the plans, Farden was committed to keeping the Bruins on the schedule, either in multiteam or dual competition. The dual meets, where gymnasts alternate routines between each team with every eye in the arena trained on them, especially provide a different level of competition in the sport that continues to grow in popularity beyond the traditional four-year Olympic cycle.

“Both programs are legendary,” Farden said. “It brings a lot of eyeballs and attention to both programs.”

The schools didn’t need to be in the same conference for the rivalry to blossom. They first competed against each other in 1977. Utah, under inaugural coach Greg Marsden, grew as one of the top programs in the country, combining marketing, recruiting and wins to sell out their home meets. The passionate fans helped the Utes to a 23-year home meet winning streak, a feat unmatched in NCAA history in any sport. It was the Bruins who ended it in 2003.

When Farden joined the Utes as an assistant in 2011, the Bruins were the reigning national champions. They were the standard in the Pac-10, which expanded to include Utah in 2012. The rivalry only intensified in the Pac-12 era as the teams have combined for nine of 10 conference championships.

"Both programs bring out the best in both programs,” Farden said. “There’s a long history of success, regardless of who’s been at the helm in both programs.”

Farden, who took over as the sole head coach in 2020 after four years as the co-head coach with Megan Marsden, credits the Utah administration for helping the program thrive through coaching changes, and spotlighted his staff, including assistant coaches, trainers, marketing managers and social media personnel. As the steward of a legendary program, Farden said he is “merely a student” of his mentors who incorporated biomechanics and sports psychology into the foundation of Utah gymnastics.

UCLA built its joyful brand under Valorie Kondos Field, who coached for 37 years before retiring in 2019. When she left, the Bruins looked to be in danger of becoming another once-proud program that couldn’t sustain success. They missed in back-to-back years under longtime Kondos Field assistant-turned-replacement Chris Waller.

But McDonald has the Bruins dancing again.

“She has an infectious joy about life,” Farden said. “I can see that, and I think that’s bringing some of the things out in her athletes."

Now, as the Bruins are jumping for joy after each routine, McDonald is doing the same in her heels. To jump to the top of the podium, they'll need to conquer their longtime rivals.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.