CHICAGO – Neither the bright lights of the big stage nor the lingering cold weather of the Midwest were enough to freeze California's stellar performance at the NCAA Championships Qualifier at UIC Pavilion on Friday.
 
In one year's time, the Golden Bears more than doubled their number of entries to the NCAA Championship individual finals with seven Cal gymnast advancing to Saturday's culminating session. Just three Bears qualified a season ago.
 
"I'm so proud of this team and very happy at the work they've put in," said head coach JT Okada, who is a day away from closing his first season at the helm of the program. "I think our future is incredibly bright. But, I also want to thank our seniors who have done a tremendous job leading us this year. It's really exciting."
 
The Bears competed in session two where senior Yordan Aleksandrov paced the team, qualifying for both the high bar (14.033) and parallel bar (13.866), along with Aaron Mah who also advanced in the high bar (13.833).  Aleksandrov finished fourth overall on the day on high bar.
 
Sophomores Kyte Crigger (13.500 - floor) and Jonathan Wang (13.966 – parallel bars) both qualified individually, with Wang pulling in a top-10 finish.
 
Freshman Shane Sadighi  produced a qualifying performance on rings, tallying a 13.466 on the night, while Mitchell Awisus qualified on pommel with a 13.333 in the Bears final rotation.
 
Harrison Plate rounded out the day with the Bears' top score on still ring (13.900).
 
Cal finished sixth as a unit with a team score of 395.991 behind top-ranked Oklahoma (410.991) who won the session to advance to the finals along with Illinois (408.824) and Penn State (404.790). Ohio State (403.959) and Iowa (400.451) also fell short of advancing to the team final.
 
The top three teams from each session Friday and the top three all-around competitors not on one of the qualifying teams, plus the top three individuals on each event not already qualified on a team or as an all-around competitor, will advance from each pre-qualifying session to the finals session.
 
The seven Bears will join the field of qualifiers from session one that included Minnesota, Nebraska, Army, Air Force, Michigan, Navy, Springfield and Stanford, which won the team competition.
 
The NCAA Championship finals begins at 4 p.m. (PT) on Saturday with live stream and live stats available on NCAA.com.
 
For more information on Cal men's gymnastics, follow the team @CalMGym on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.