When No. 5 Utah hosts No. 4 UCLA Saturday night, the eyes of thousands in attendance plus many more who will take in the meet on FOX will inevitably be drawn toward Olympians.
It makes sense. There are a lot of them between the Red Rocks and the Bruins, and in many cases they are the best gymnasts their respective teams have to offer.
For Utah, there’s Grace McCallum and Amelie Morgan (2021 Tokyo Olympics). McCallum was a silver medalist with Team USA, while Morgan was a bronze medalist with Team Great Britain.
For UCLA, there’s Jordan Chiles (Tokyo 2021 and the 2024 Paris Olympics), Emma Malabuyo (Paris 2024) and Brooklyn Moors (Tokyo 2021).
Chiles was teammates with McCallum in 2021, winning a team silver medal alongside her, Simone Biles and Suni Lee. Chiles then won a team gold medal with Team USA in Paris, while also — initially — winning a bronze medal on floor exercise, too.
Malabuyo, meanwhile, represented the Philippines at the Paris Games, while Moors was on Team Canada in Tokyo and finished No. 16 in the all-around competition.
Entering Saturday’s showdown between the former Pac-12 rivals, Chiles, McCallum, Malabuyo and Moors are all ranked in the top 10 nationally on at least an event:
- McCallum on bars (No. 1), beam (No. 7) and in the all-around (No. 8).
- Chiles on floor (No. 1), bars (No. 4) and on vault (No. 5).
- Moors on floor (No. 4).
- Malabuyo on beam (No. 7).
Simply put, neither Utah nor UCLA have the success they’ve seen this season without their Olympians, and that is even with a breakout season from Utah’s Makenna Smith and strong seasons from UCLA’s Emily Lee, Chae Campbell and Frida Esparza, all of whom are ranked in the top 15 nationally on at least one event.
In what should be a surprise to no one, Olympic gymnasts tend to be good at college gymnastics despite notable differences in the two, and Utah and UCLA have proven adept at getting them into their programs.
There remain gymnasts at Utah specifically who aspire to be Olympians going forward with the Los Angeles Games in 2028 beckoning, and there were some Red Rocks who had hoped to make it to Paris, only for those dreams to be upended.
Grace McCallum trained to compete in Paris
It is well known that Morgan trained for and, for a time during the 2024 college gymnastics season, attempted to make Team Great Britain for the Paris Olympics.
She ultimately withdrew from consideration, leaving Elite gymnastics and the Olympics behind.
Ahead of the last season, McCallum too was training for the Paris Games, she told the Deseret News. She had real intentions of competing for a spot on Team USA, which ended up being the quintet of Biles, Chiles, Lee, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera.
“All last fall I was training for Elite,” McCallum said.
After the University of Utah and former Red Rocks head coach Tom Farden parted ways in late November of 2023, however, McCallum was placed in a difficult position.
She had been planning on having one of her coaches at Utah go with her to elite competition during the NCAA season, in a similar vein to what Leanne Wong did at with Florida Gators head coach Jenny Rowland and assistant coach Owen Field or what Aleah Finnegan did with LSU assistant coach Garrett Griffeth.
After Farden’s late departure from the program, though, McCallum decided an under-manned Utah staff couldn’t afford to lose another coach during the season, not if the Red Rocks wanted to put their best foot forward.
So it was at that point that she scrapped her Olympic dreams.
“As hard as it was, I had to kind of set that aside and really focus on the team more, which was hard but I knew it was the right thing to do and I was very at peace with my decision,” McCallum said.
McCallum is still at peace with her decision, although she notes that watching the Olympics last summer was difficult.
“I trained so hard for all the fall,” she said. “I was in here (Utah gymnastics’ Dumke Center) every weekday for six hours a day. It was a lot of work. Knowing all the hard work that I put in and then not being able to go out there in the summer and at least give it my best shot, it was hard.”
McCallum noted that she was happy for her former Olympic teammates, though.
“I was super excited to watch all the girls, and I was so glad that they had a normal Olympic experience,” she said. “The COVID Olympics, it was weird. You didn’t get to see other teams, you didn’t have a crowd, so I was really happy and excited for them that they got that normal Olympic experience.”
Avery Neff hasn’t given up having Olympic aspirations
Utah freshman Avery Neff was the top overall recruit in her signing class (2024) and is to this day the highest rated women’s college gymnastics recruit ever, according to College Gym News.
Yet the furthest Neff got in her career prior to joining Utah was Level 10. She has never done Elite gymnastics, and as such has never been a U.S. national team member (junior or senior).
There is good reason for that, her club coach at Olympus Gymnastics, Ryan Kirkham, told the Deseret News.
“She really wanted to push Elite,” Kirkham said, “and anatomically what stopped her from pursuing elite was bars because in elite you are required to do different grips on bars and her arms don’t turn, so trying to put herself (in certain grips) would feel like it’s gonna rip from her shoulder all the way down her wrist.
“We would just do hangs, and even just hanging on a bar in her front grip would be like the end of her. She couldn’t do it. There’s a compulsory routine that all kids trying to compete in Elite have to do and she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t even safely attempt one of the skills, because she would rip off the bar 100% of the time.”
Kirkham noted that was the one thing Neff struggled with when it came to Elite gymnastics. Otherwise, she was good to go.
“We felt like everywhere else she was ready, and that she could have been very competitive,” he said.
Anyone who knows Neff knows that she cannot be counted out, though, even when it doesn’t seem possible, as evidenced by her speedy return to competition this season after severely spraining both of her ankles in January.
And Neff is not ready to shut the door on an attempt at the Olympics.
“I think right now where I am, I just want to focus on NCAA gymnastics,” she said, “but I definitely don’t want to fully take it off the counter. In NCAA you kind of just have your set skills that you have to do and I like playing. I like having fun, trying (new skills) and flipping whatever I can, so I definitely don’t want to limit myself to only college.”
Neff has serious aspirations for her time at Utah — “I have so many goals in college I want to accomplish,” she said — but Elite gymnastics still pulls to her.
“I am going to just kind of trickle in little things, play with other things and see what I want to do in the future,” she said. “I don’t know for sure, but it’s definitely not off the counter. I know there’s a lot of work that has to (be) put in for sure, put in for that to happen.”
Clara Raposo isn’t done with Elite gymnastics
Another of Utah’s freshmen this season, Clara Raposo, deferred her enrollment at Utah for a year in order to try to make Team Canada for the Paris Games.
That dream didn’t work out, as Raposo was hurt in the build-up to the Olympics.
Healthy now, though, and better adjusted to life in the United State and college gymnastics, Raposo doesn’t shy away from it. She isn’t done with Elite gymnastics, not by a long shot.
“I definitely do (want to go back to Elite). I would still love to do both,” she said. “I feel like I still have so much more that I want to achieve in that part of my life as well as in college, so it’s still something I’m really looking forward to.”
As to what her return to Elite gymnastics will look like, Raposo is less certain. With still a month remaining in the 2025 NCAA season she is very focused on Utah. When the season comes to an end, that’s when she’ll work to really figure things out.
“I’ve thought about it a little bit, but it’s kind of hard to plan,” she said. “I’m trying to go day by day, because you never know. I feel like there’s been a lot going on within gym (at Utah) and we just are so busy during season, so I’ve tried my best to keep those (Elite) skills going, but we’re just playing it literally day by day, and I’ll see what happens at the end of season.”