This feature originally appeared in the 2022 Winter edition of the Cal Sports Quarterly. The Cal Athletics flagship magazine features long-form sports journalism at its finest and provides in-depth coverage of the scholar-athlete experience in Berkeley. Printed copies are mailed four times a year to Bear Backers who give annually at the Bear Club level (currently $600 or more). For more information on how you can receive a printed version of the Cal Sports Quarterly at home, send an email to CalAthleticsFund@berkeley.edu or call (510) 642-2427.




It's April 16, 2021, and the Cal women's gymnastics team is in Fort Worth, Texas, ready for its moment.
 
Up to this point, the Golden Bears have produced the best season in school history, setting numerous school records – even tying one national record – and recording 10 of its top 20 team scores ever.
 
Now, the NCAA Championships are about to begin, with a chance to reach even more of their goals and dreams.
 
As junior Maya Bordas begins her uneven bars routine, she is locked in, hearing only assistant coach Janelle McDonald shout out her keywords: tight, arms, shoulders.
 
"I think all of my training really settled in," Bordas said. "I was truly trusting in all of that training that I've done. We'd sacrificed so much to have this season. I think all of that allowed me to do what I did."
 
However, as she prepares to dismount, Bordas becomes increasingly aware of her surroundings.
 
"I was like, 'oh this is crazy, we're at nationals,'" Bordas said. "I think that's why I held the stick a little bit too long. I was so soaked up in the moment."
 
It was a big moment. She had just stuck the landing on what would be a NCAA championship-winning routine – the first national title in school history.
 
Only an hour before, all of this would have seemed like a dream.
 
Uncertainty at the Arena
During its pre-meet warm-up routine at Dickies Arena, Cal received some unexpected and unwanted news: due to potential contact tracing concerns, event organizers had decided to pull the Bears off the floor. A nightmare scenario.
 
"We felt so defeated in that moment," co-head coach Justin Howell said. "After everything we went through all year long with the protocols, with as careful as we had been, as diligent as we had been as a team - they did an amazing job all year long of staying safe and following protocols – and this is the way it's going to end."
 
The team was sent back to the locker room to wait.
 
"That was definitely devastating. We thought all of our hard work had gone down the drain," Bordas said. "There was definitely a lot of tension in the air. There were some tears. Everyone was pretty angry about the whole situation. I just remember thinking, if anything, we made it this far, and that's something to be grateful for."
 
After allowing the Bears a little time to process their emotions, Howell and co-head coach Elisabeth Crandall-Howell had the team change into their competition leotards and put their bar grips on, just in case the decision was reversed and Cal was allowed to compete.
 
"We knew if we were going to get back on the floor, we wouldn't be able to finish warmups or had really limited time," Howell said. "We're going to keep fighting this fight, and we're going to be prepared to go out there and compete. You know the work that you've put in, you know that you can hit cold routines without warming up. We practiced scenarios where we don't get a lot of warmup time. We were all very confident that they could go out there and hit cold routines."
 
Forty-two minutes later, after lengthy deliberations, the event organizers decided to allow the Bears to compete.
 
"When they let us go and said we would be able to warm up, we all ran out there and it felt like we had won already," Bordas said. "We ran out there, warmed up and I could just feel the energy from all my teammates and myself. We were just grateful to be out there."
 
While the deliberations were underway, Michigan, Florida and Minnesota – the three teams that would compete with Cal during the morning rotations – had all completed their warmups. The Bears were given 18 minutes to warm up for the vault, uneven bars and beam, having been pulled off the floor in the middle of their vault warmup. Coaches from the other teams even volunteered to help the Bears set up the bars to allow them to warm up.
 
"The coaches wanted to support us and help us get through this warmup," Howell said. "It was a cool moment where our entire gymnastics community came together and wanted our student-athletes to have their moment that they had worked so hard for all year long."
 
Competition Begins
The Bears started their NCAA Championships rotation on the floor, then moved to vault before arriving at the uneven bars. The pressure was on the Bears to live up to their billing as the top-ranked bars team in the country. Bordas was fourth in the Bears' lineup on this Friday afternoon.
 
"Definitely leading up to the routine, I always get nerves," Bordas said. "That's never disappeared even after four years. I think that's only natural. But you do have to get in the headspace where you know what you're doing, trust your training and just block all the other thoughts out."
 
That's what she did. Nailing the routine and the landing.
 
"Honestly, our entire team, but Maya specifically in that routine, she competed with so much joy," Howell said. "Her routine was beautiful, her execution was flawless, the amplitude of her skills was beautiful. She landed a dismount, stuck it cold. Threw her head back and saluted. The whole performance - if you're a human being sitting in the judge's chair - you can't help but give her a big score in that moment."
 
The judges flashed a 9.95 on the board, the best of the day to that point and putting Bordas in line to win an individual NCAA title.
 
"I had a pretty good feeling that I did well." Bordas said. "I know what it feels like when I get certain scores, so I knew that it was pretty good. But I didn't know it was as good as it was. I felt a little bit of relief when I landed, then a lot of adrenaline."
 
However, she had to wait. There was another rotation to come plus the entire night session with four additional schools, meaning gymnasts from five of the best teams in the country had an opportunity to record a better routine before any champions would be crowned.
 
Cal's First National Champion
The Bears returned to the arena to watch the night session.
 
"I was torn between enjoying the meet and letting go, but also monitoring the bars scores to see how they did," Bordas said. "The routines were beautiful. I wasn't going to be mad. The best bars routine deserves to get the top score. There was a lot of tension waiting. My teammates were saying stuff to me all night – 'get ready; it's going to be you.' I didn't really know, honestly. At the end of the day, we're at the national championships so it's not crazy to think that someone would top that score and get a 10.0 with all the great teams, gymnasts and routines that were there."
 
In the end, Maile O'Keefe from Utah also recorded a 9.95, meaning that she and Bordas were going to be co-national champions.
 
Bordas' goals when coming to Cal were much more understated than winning a NCAA Championship. "My goal was just to make a lineup," she said. "Now, I think I could've dreamed a little bigger."
 
Considered a late bloomer, Bordas didn't earn Level 10 status until she was a sophomore in high school. She was still looking for a college her junior year when she tied for the all-around title at Junior Olympics Nationals with future Cal teammate Milan Clausi. Bordas soon visited Cal, and "after I saw the campus, I fell in love with Berkeley."
 
Bordas' rise into one of the nation's elite gymnasts has coincided with the ascent of the Cal women's gymnastics program. The Bears have 29 ranked wins over the past three years and haven't finished below No. 11 in the country in any of the past four seasons. Cal ranked among the top 10 in the country in all four events last year and set school records on bars, beam, floor and all-around.
 
The moment last season when they realized they were capable of something special came against UCLA, when the Bears tied an NCAA record on the uneven bars with a mark of 49.825. Cal also set a school record on beam and overall team score that day and defeated the Bruins, a team that has perpetually had the Bears' number.
 
"That was the moment when we realized, we are this good," Bordas said. "We are a contender among the best of the best. In years past, we've looked at teams and thought, 'Wow, they're really good.' We'd admire them. But now, we are competing with them and actually have a shot at beating them, and it's not a crazy thing if we do beat them at this point, because we are that good."
 
National championship-level good.
 
April 16 did not go the way that Maya Bordas would have dreamt it, but she got a storybook ending after all. An Austin, Texas, native, she went into her home state and won the first NCAA title in Cal women's gymnastics history in front of family and friends, proving that the Cal women's gymnastics program deserves its place on the national stage.