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The University of Oklahoma’s independent student voice since 1916
The Sooners celebrate after winning the meet against Florida, Utah and Auburn in the 2022 NCAA women’s gymnastics chamionship final on April 16.
RAY BAHNER/THE DAILY
Sooners claim 5th NCAA title Gymnasts motivated by preseason criticism, make record comeback NATHAN AKER nathanchristian@ou.edu
FORT WORTH — K.J. Kindler held up a sheet of paper, the script of which had fueled Oklahoma’s fire all season. “If there is a year when it is actually safe to predict Oklahoma not winning, this is the year,” the highlighted white parchment read. Moments earlier, Ragan Smith had proved that prediction wrong by dialing in and transferring her focus solely to nailing her beam routine and bringing home the Sooners’ fifth NCAA Championship. “I didn’t even hear it,” Smith said of the roaring crowd before she began her performance. “I was so locked in and just focused on myself that I didn’t hear a thing.” Holding no awareness of the four teams’ running marks, the former U.S. National Team member and Olympic alternate delivered a near-perfect score in the biggest meet of her gymnastics career. With practically no lapse in time, Smith sprinted into a hug with Kindler, her teammates and assistant coaches, who’d all but clinched the national championship win.
The Sooners awaited the final tallies with anticipation, just like they did the year prior when Michigan closed them out on beam in heartbreaking fashion. However, this was a distinct kind of anticipation on Saturday afternoon. Once Smith’s 9.9625 was revealed, screams of elation echoed through Dickies Arena. Oklahoma notched its second NCAA Championship victory in four seasons with a 198.200 over No. 2 Florida, No. 4 Utah and No. 7 Auburn, and spited the bulletin board material that had lingered inside its locker room for months. Florida placed second, scoring a 198.0875 and Utah placed third with a 197.7500 while Auburn placed fourth with a 197.3500. The win also avenged OU’s regular season losses to the Gators and Red Rocks. “I’ve never experienced this much team love before, and everyone having my back,” Smith said following the Sooners’ championship victory. “I’ve never experienced it until this year, and especially the moment we just had together. It was so special to me.” Clearly, blocking out the external noise worked for the junior, as Smith recouped from a subpar 9.7375 on floor to notch that vital score on beam. Staying composed and locked in seemed a recurring theme for OU throughout the competition. Oklahoma found itself in a massive hole at the end of the first rotation after posting a subpar 49.1875.
But the Sooners buckled down, sharpened their skills and scratched their way back to victory. “They had to fight and fight and claw their way back into this meet,” Kindler said on the ABC broadcast directly after the competition. “I am so impressed with their mental stability and their strength. I just can’t even tell you, I’m just so proud of them.” In the second rotation on vault, a 9.9 from senior Allie Stern got OU rolling. Then, a 9.975 in the No. 2 spot from sophomore Katherine LeVasseur sparked much-needed momentum for Oklahoma, priming a 9.9375 from freshman Jordan Bowers and a 9.9625 from senior Olivia Trautman. With four scores of 9.9 or higher, the Sooners posted their highest vault score ever in an NCAA Championship meet with a 49.6625 and catapulted themselves into third place behind Utah and Florida. “There wasn’t a lot that needed to be said, I felt,” Kindler said of prepping her team for vault following their off performance on floor. “Their heads were in the right spot. “It wasn’t about, ‘Oh, no,’ it was more about, ‘Let’s go.’” From there on, Oklahoma was seemingly infallible, carrying that momentum through the third event with its No. 1 ranked bars lineup. That ranking certainly held its validity, as five of the six routines were 9.9s or higher, the best being
a career-high 9.975 from freshman Danielle Sievers. The Sooners’ bars lineup is accustomed to making history. In OU’s final home meet this season, its bars lineup broke a program record for highest score on the event in school history with a 49.825. On Saturday, the highest score ever on an event in the NCAA Championships added to the record books. “Really proud of the way they just kept feeding off each other,” Kindler said. “They do these kinds of routines in practice all the time, but getting it out of yourself in a moment like that is something special.” The Sooners have stayed close to each other all year despite undermining comments made about the group before the 2022 season began. Back in the winter, fifth-year senior Carly Woodard was searching online, reading about the Sooners and their perceived potential coming into the season, and found the quote Kindler vengefully referenced after Saturday’s meet. That and other similar remarks gave Woodard and her roommates, seniors Allie Stern and Emma LaPinta, the idea to print quotes from skeptics and post them around the Sooners’ practice facility for motivation. The now infamous aforementioned quote, from a gymnastics website called “The Balance Beam Situation,” was posted on the refrigerator in the Sooners’ locker room. Woodard and Oklahoma took it
quite personally. “We read the internet, all of us do, whether we admit to it or not,” Woodard said. “I saw that (quote), and immediately sent it to my senior class. I was like, ‘What’re we going to do about this?’” For Woodard, reaching the pinnacle of competition in Fort Worth took many sacrifices. But, after opting for a fifth year after being provided extra eligibility due to COVID-19, the super senior has achieved just what she set out to do in January — win another ring. “Getting this opportunity in this fifth year is something that I’m incredibly grateful for,” Woodard said. “To go out on top was obviously a goal of mine from the beginning. It’s a surreal experience.” As Woodard’s career comes to a finish, there stands a bright future for the underclassmen and the continuity of Kindler’s championship pedigree in Norman. With Sievers, Bowers and freshman Danae Fletcher heading into their sophomore seasons and LeVasseur, Davis and sophomore Bell Johnson heading into their junior seasons, they will continue to hone their skills as they enter the 2023 season as champions. “I can’t say enough about how great this team was today,” Kindler said. “And again, fighters ‘till the end when it would’ve been easy to count themselves out.”
Graduate Student Senate defines purpose Organization leaders aim to amplify graduate student voices KALY PHAN kaly.n.phan-1@ou.edu
Leaders in the OU Graduate Student Senate are striving to bring the organization out of “oblivion” by creating better communication and bridging the gap between undergraduate and graduate students. The GSS, like the Undergraduate Student Congress, is a legislative body which seeks to represent its student constituents’ interests and goals. Claire Burch was elected as
GSS chair in April 2021 and she said one of her main goals as chair is to create more awareness of the senate’s place and purpose at OU. Over the past couple years, the GSS has “fallen into oblivion,” Burch said, and she hopes to change that with outreach between the senate, the other branches and other student organizations. She said the senate’s reach to build relationships with the OU administration and the graduate student population isn’t being used to its fullest extent. There is more they could be doing to help graduate students on campus, she said. “I recognize that past chairs have been very insular, and we are working really hard to kind of break that culture,” Burch said. “There’s a pretty good chance that (graduate
students) don’t know that we exist currently. (For example), if they see articles that only mention the Undergraduate Student Congress, that creates the perception that they don’t have a voice. They do.” Burch and her vice chair, Rin Ferraro, said they are seeking to have a direct connection to administration through the graduate college to express graduate students’ interests. Departments don’t always offer the best way to voice concerns, so the senate acts as an alternative made of peers rather than staff or faculty, Burch said. Ferraro said everyone on campus wants a voice, which is “especially difficult” for graduate students, and the senate hopes to fix this. “Sometimes (graduate students
are) forgotten in student affairs,” Ferraro said. “We’re considered students or staff, and usually whatever it is doesn’t benefit us. We’re one of the few universities that has a specific branch dedicated just for grad students, and it’s just a great opportunity for us to be heard and be part of different, like Student Affairs on campus.” Ohio University, the University of Iowa and Texas Christian University offer a separate entity for graduate students within their student governments. Other universities, like the University of Texas, only have a “Graduate At-Large Representative” position in its legislative branch. Burch said she has been approached with the question of why GSS — which has many of the same
responsibilities as congress — is needed at OU, where only 22 percent of the student population are graduates. She said that, no matter the percentage, every voice deserves to be heard and considered in decision-making. The senate represents graduate students so the undergraduates don’t have to, Burch said, since they don’t necessarily always understand what a graduate student’s experience looks like. Ferraro said graduate students exist in a “weird role” where they’re both staff and students, with many of their peers being enrolled full-time while also teaching course sections. “One of the things that we had see SENATE page 2