THE UNDEFEATED OKLAHOMA Sooners arrived in Fort Worth, Texas, last April as the clear favorite to win the national championship. They were the two-time defending champions, had been the top-ranked team in the nation all season and were fresh off their latest conference title. A seventh national title -- in only 10 years -- would cement the program's dynasty status and seemed well within reach.
But that's not what happened.
The team opened their semifinal meet on vault, an event they had just ended the regular season ranked No. 1 on -- and it was clear almost immediately that this would not be an ordinary meet. In the lead-off position, Faith Torrez, then a sophomore, underrotated her Yurchenko 1.5 and fell -- for the first time in her collegiate career on vault.
The crowd audibly gasped.
A few minutes later, competing the same vault as Torrez, then-junior Jordan Bowers took several deep steps backwards upon her landing. Katherine LeVasseur, a senior, had a similar error.
"This is heartbreaking and devastating," commentator Aly Raisman said after LeVasseur's vault on the ESPN broadcast.
The Sooners recorded a 48.325 -- their lowest vault score since 2008 -- and headed into the second rotation in last place in the semifinal. Despite a valiant effort the rest of the meet, with Torrez and senior Audrey Davis each taking home individual NCAA titles, the Sooners couldn't overcome their start. Instead of competing for the team title two days later, they were back home in Norman wondering what might have been. It was the first time in 12 years that Oklahoma hadn't competed in the championship meet.
ALMOST 10 MONTHS later, that meet has taken on a new meaning for those, like Torrez, Bowers and Davis, who remain with the Sooners. Again ranked No. 1 and boasting an undefeated record entering Friday's must-see meet (9 p.m. ET on ESPN2) against No. 2 LSU, the Sooners insist they see it only as motivation in the new year.
"It lit a fire under my butt," Davis, now a fifth-year senior, told ESPN. "I came out here and I'm like, 'Hey, this is my last year. I am going to go out as the best gymnast that I can be.' And I think the same goes for the team, that's how everyone felt. We really just focused on the details [in preseason] and doing what we know how to do."
Torrez, after some time to process the results, found her own positive take on it.
"What really still stands out to me is how much we fought after we fell. We kept fighting and had the 'It's not over until it's over' mentality until the very end. That's what I take from that meet more than anything, and that [fighting spirit] is such a positive and a great thing about us. We know we did everything we could."
The disappointing semifinal result had another unexpected effect in that it created a vulnerability with both the gymnasts and the coaches. Head coach K.J. Kindler said her staff put a "conscious effort" into team chemistry, fostering relationships and team-building exercises in the preseason. She said she encouraged everyone to share more with one another, beyond the surface level, and it created a trust they didn't have before.
In August, the Sooners traveled to the rustic lakeside town of Broken Bow, Oklahoma, about four hours away from campus for a retreat. Staying in cabins together, they spent the weekend doing team-bonding activities, trying to learn as much as they could about their teammates and working to include the squad's six freshmen into the mix.
'"We had so many fun little activities that we did just to really get to know each other on such a deep level," Bowers, now a senior, told ESPN. "This is the closest team I've ever been on. Everybody has each other's backs. We're all out there competing for the same thing, and we're doing it together, which is what really matters."
And while the Sooners know others are still talking about their semifinal performance, they didn't spend much time dwelling on it during the preseason. They didn't need to.
"We're the underdogs this season," Kindler told ESPN last month. "We haven't been able to call ourselves that in a long time and it's a different mentality, but I think it's a good one. We're rallying around that and believe we have a lot to prove. ... We own what happened, we're accountable for what happened. We made a mistake. Oh my gosh, we're humans. It's a tough time to make a mistake but it happened. Ignoring it would be silly because the rest of the country isn't ignoring it, so we're not compartmentalizing it, we're using it to make us better."
But while they may call themselves the underdogs, their results tell a different story.
In the first competition of the season, a quad against Auburn, BYU and Nebraska, Oklahoma recorded the top score among all teams in the country with a 197.550. Torrez won the all-around title. The redemption mission was officially underway.
"We're not defending anything, we're not the reigning national champions. We're coming this season and we're playing offense," Davis said after the first meet. "We're doing the gymnastics we know how to do. My motto my whole life has been, 'Train like you're second, compete like you're first,' and now that's true and it's made us work harder."
In the star-studded Sprouts Farmer's Market Collegiate Quad in Oklahoma City the following week, Oklahoma (197.950) came out on top again against defending national champions LSU (197.650), California (197.275) and Utah (196.800). Bowers took home all-around honors (39.675), with Davis (bars) and Torrez (beam) each winning event titles.
"It's not like Florida or LSU fans liked us before." OU head coach K.J. Kindler, on joining the SEC conference
Kindler compared the meet to the national championships in terms of the caliber of teams, attention and arena setting saying, "[It's a] great experience to have in your pocket." She was happy to have the chance to see how her gymnasts performed "under this kind of pressure" early in the season.
Since that statement victory, the Sooners have started conference competition. After years of dominating the Big 12, Oklahoma joined the SEC across sports ahead of the current academic year. Arguably the most competitive conference in gymnastics, and for its rowdy fans who regularly pack arenas, Kindler was excited for the challenge.
"We know the environments we're going to go into are going to be volatile, but we're used to that and it was just as hard when we competed against these schools and weren't in the conference," Kindler said. "It's not like Florida or LSU fans liked us before."
Oklahoma won its official SEC opener at home against Missouri on Jan. 17, and has handily defeated Alabama, Arkansas and Kentucky since then. After Week 6, Torrez, Bowers and Davis are all ranked in the top four nationally for all-around. Davis is currently the top-ranked gymnast on bars and Oklahoma is No. 1 as a team on both bars and beam. The Sooners are the only remaining undefeated team in the SEC.
But facing LSU in Baton Rouge will be the team's toughest test and is perhaps the marquee meet of the regular season. The Tigers have the defending NCAA all-around champion in Haleigh Bryant and are the No. 1 ranked team on vault. The Sooners know it will be a battle, but Torrez was relishing the opportunity.
"I'm so excited," Torrez said. "I always watch the SEC meets on TV and I love the energy levels. The fans are crazy and every meet always feels like a big meet. It's going to be so fun going into those atmospheres. I can't wait."
And Torrez isn't alone with that sentiment. LSU head coach Jay Clark is also looking forward to the matchup on Friday and the prospect of facing the team multiple times every season. "Oklahoma brings a lot to the SEC," Clark told ESPN. "They've been the gold standard nationally for the better part of a decade now and are the model of sustainability and consistency."
But he couldn't help but add a caveat.
"I think it will be a bigger adjustment for them [than the other teams in the conference] because we're all used to beating on each other week after week," he said. "They haven't had to run that gauntlet year over year yet."
No matter what happens against LSU or during any part of the conference schedule, Oklahoma will be focused on redemption. Those on the team have embraced their status as under-the-radar underdogs, even if no one else in the country seems to consider them as such, and hope to use that as fuel all the way until the championships on April 19 again in Fort Worth.
"Every day we're pushing ourselves to be a little better than yesterday and we're working really hard to do something important," said Davis.
Asked to clarify exactly what that "something important" is, Davis didn't take a pause or need a moment to think before answering.
"It most definitely is a national championship," she said. "I mean, all of the top teams' goal is to win one but when you walk into our [practice] gym, you see Maggie [Nichols], you see all of these incredible gymnasts who have won so many national championships [on the wall] and you're like, 'I'm going to be like them.' So that's your goal and that's what you want to do. We're going to do whatever it takes."