Milan Clausi waited near the beam, sucking in short breaths of air and trying to hide her tears. She was shaking.
 
"To be completely honest, I wanted to be anywhere but right there and right then," she said.
 
Moments earlier, the Cal gymnastics freshman was just a few feet away when teammate Toni-Ann Williams crumpled into a sobbing heap before her on the floor of Oregon State's Gill Coliseum. Williams had torn her Achilles as she punched up on her final floor pass.
 
After Williams tore her other Achilles in 2016 and dislocated her elbow last fall, it was supposed to be the bonus season – the victory lap – for the young woman who rocketed into the record books as the most decorated gymnast in school history. Instead, in the blink of an eye it was over for her, and the whole team felt the loss instantaneously.
 
"It was a mess. Everyone was emotional. Everyone was crying," Clausi said. "It wasn't any surprise at that moment what that meant for her, which made it all the worse. There's really no way to describe the heartbreak that everyone felt when that happened to her."
 
Each gymnast on the Cal squad has a "person" – a teammate to offer words of encouragement, a joke or even just a hug before she performs on an event. Williams was Clausi's person. Her absence left Clausi feeling hollow as she waited to salute the judges for her final event.
 
Half an arena away, Williams was being examined on the athletic training table while begging co-head coach Justin Howell and trainer Jacqueline Martinez to let her back out onto the floor.
 
"I'm a professional crutcher now!" she quipped.
 
As someone who had already torn an Achilles, Williams knew as soon as she took off on that fateful floor pass that her season was over. Dire thoughts raced through her mind.
 
"Why do I always get injured?"
 
"Why me?"
 
By the time the support staff lifted her off the floor and carried her to the training table, her attitude shifted.
 
"Something hit me and I realized it didn't have to end as a bad day. I didn't have to end it like this," Williams said.
 
She made it back to the floor just in time to deliver her signature pre-routine speech to Clausi.
 
Crutching out to her teammate, Williams clasped both of Clausi's hands and with tears rolling down her cheeks whispered, "Go out there and do it for the both of us. You have both of our spirit, you have both of our souls – do it for us."
 
"I remember standing there and listening to what she was saying and just really appreciating it more than anything else. I couldn't not look her in the eye and just appreciate her for everything she is in that moment," Clausi explained.
 
"There was no way I wasn't going to go out and do it for her in that moment. It was smart on her behalf…it helped me because in that moment I was not where I should have been, but to have the notion of doing something that someone now can't made it a necessity," she added.
 
With tears stinging her eyes, Clausi saluted the judges and mounted the beam. The television cameras captured her mid-performance with a solitary tear streaming down her cheek as she smiled. When she landed her dismount, Clausi buried her face into her hands and let the emotions wash over her.
 
She earned a 9.95 from one judge – a near-perfect score – and delivered a career-high 9.875, helping the Bears wrap up their meet at Oregon State with a 49.100 on beam.
 
"That moment I had chills. I forgot about the injury. I realized what was important, and it was the team and being there for the team," Williams said. "That really helped turn around that moment that was so horrible to become something that was more of a silver lining."
 
Williams' injury could have been the pivotal moment for the 2019 Cal women's gymnastics team. Instead, it was the minutes that followed that helped define their season, bringing the team closer together through their shared loss.
 
"The fact that she had gone out of her way…it changed me as a person and as an athlete, and I think it did the same thing for everybody…as horrible as that situation was, it was completely pivotal for the entire team because you can't take anything for granted, and she's one of the biggest examples of that," Clausi said. "To turn around and make it about everyone else when your entire world just stopped is insane."
 
Cal's 2019 season culminated with a program-record 197.675 team total in their seventh consecutive NCAA Regional appearance. Unfortunately for the Bears, the total was just shy of helping the team clinch a third NCAA Championships berth in the last four seasons.
 
Still, Cal will be represented at the NCAA Championships – by none other than Williams and Clausi. Williams is one of six finalists for the AAI Award, an honor bestowed to the nation's most outstanding senior gymnast and equivalent to football's Heisman Trophy, while Clausi qualified as a vault specialist after winning the event at Regionals.
 
It's a fitting close for two gymnasts whose careers seem both parallel and interwoven all at once. They share the title of Pac-12 Freshman of the Year. As freshmen, they both qualified for the national championship as individuals. They both came to Cal to help build a program.
 
"I feel like I see myself in Milan from when I was a freshman coming in…I feel like it's full circle. This isn't the way we wanted it to end, but me going with an individual who I see as very similar to myself is definitely full circle for me. That was who I was five years ago. She's such a special person to me, and to have her in my life, I'm really grateful for. It's pretty awesome."
 
The role that Williams and Clausi play in each other's lives is even more remarkable given that it was never really supposed to happen. In a world without injury, Williams would have wrapped up her collegiate career last spring, leaving just records for Clausi to chase and massive shoes to fill.

Yet in the unpredictable yet serendipitous world of college athletics, they will now be walking side-by-side onto the biggest stage in the sport. The unlikely yet dynamic duo takes to Texas this week with very different opportunities at hand. For Williams, it's the ending of an integral chapter of her life and the chance to say goodbye to old friends. For Clausi, it's the beginning of her opportunity to learn to lead her future teammates as they continue to try to build on the foundation laid before them.
 
"It's really nice to know I'm not going into this alone, and to have felt like that all season," Clausi said. "I'm incredibly appreciative of Toni and everything she is."