The 2025 graduating class is full of champions, Olympians, and stellar athletes who have left their mark on the sport of gymnastics. These are some of the brightest stars the sport has seen in recent memory, they'll be leaving behind enormous legacies and big shoes to fill.
Oklahoma Sooners
2025 All-Around National Champion Jordan Bowers and her teammate Audrey Davis graduate with three team national titles from Oklahoma.
Florida Gators
Two-time Olympic alternate and NCAA standout Leanne Wong graduates from Florida on her way to med school.
Missouri Tigers
Fan favorite Helen Hu is retiring from gymnastics for real this time, after retiring in 2023, taking the 2024 season off, and coming back to win a national balance beam title in 2025.
Oregon State Beavers
Olympic medalist Jade Carey had an incredibly impressive senior season, earning four perfect 10s (three on floor, one on balance beam) to bring her career total to 16. Across her four years as a Beaver, Carey won 168 event titles, 51 this season alone. Carey was named the winner of the 2025 American Athlete, Inc. Award, which recognizes the top female senior gymnast nationwide. She is also a finalist for the prestigious Honda award, recognizing the top NCAA athlete in each sport, along with Oklahoma’s Bowers and Davis and LSU’s Aleah Finnegan.
UCLA Bruins
UCLA’s Brooklyn Moors, Emma Malabuyo, and Chae Campbell have left an indelible impact on the program, bringing it back to its former glory and ending their careers as National Runner-Ups. Campbell won the Big 10 All-Around Title, Moors won the national floor title, and Malabuyo helped clinch the team’s advance to the finals with a second-place finish of her own on the balance beam.
Utah Utes
Olympian and Utah cornerstone Grace McCallum will return as a student coach next year, after claiming four individual runner-up finishes at NCAAs this year. LSU graduates a shocking 10 athletes, including Olympian Aleah Finnegan and last year’s American Athlete, Inc. winner and All-Around national champion Haleigh Bryant. In her career, Bryant owns at least one perfect 10 on each event, what is referred to as a "Gym Slam" in the sport.
Who are the rising stars in gymnastics, ready to take over from these legends?
Oklahoma Sooners
Oklahoma rising senior Faith Torrez is the heir apparent to the void left by the graduates, already having a long list of accolades to her name, including multiple individual conference and national titles the past two seasons. This year, she took silver on the floor exercise and bronze in the all-around and on balance beam at NCAAs after sharing the balance beam national title with her teammate Audrey Davis last year. Torrez is the reigning SEC champion on the floor exercise and shares the conference honor on balance beam.
OU also has a dangerous trio of rising sophomores — Addison Fatta, Lily Pederson, and Elle Mueller. Pederson is a Level 10 National Champion, while Mueller won the 2024 Nastia Liukin Cup. Fatta has Olympic Trials and international experience with Team USA as a senior elite gymnast. Fatta and Pederson both competed in the All-Around multiple times this season, with Fatta being named a first-team All-American in the All-Around after NCAAs. Mueller consistently made vault and floor lineups, breaking 9.900 in both events.
LSU Tigers
Last year’s national champions, the LSU Tigers, boast the reigning SEC Freshman of the Year and NCAA Vault champion, Kailin Chio, and former USA Gymnastics Winter Cup All-Around Champion, Lexi Zeiss. Chio hit a 39.800 in the All-Around this season and won the national vault title. Zeiss and Chio’s teammate, Kaliya Lincoln, had a limited season due to injuries, but the Olympic alternate and Pan American champion is a powerhouse and will likely become a staple in the Tigers’ All-Around lineup and especially in the floor exercise.
Utah Utes
For much of the year, the Freshman of the Year race was neck and neck between two athletes — the aforementioned Chio and Utah’s Avery Neff, who was the number 1 recruit in the class of 2024. Neff’s season took a pause after she sprained both of her ankles during her floor routine on Jan. 17 in a home meet, but she miraculously returned to competition just three weeks later after working closely with the team’s training staff. By the end of the season, she was back in the All-Around, winning the All-Around title at Utah’s regional semifinal appearance with a 39.650. She ended her freshman season as a four-time All-American and the Big 12 Newcomer of the Year.
Arkansas Razorbacks
Arkansas’s Joscelyn Roberson is another SEC gymnast to be reckoned with, breaking multiple program records for the Razorbacks this year. She had a nonstop year, from traveling to Paris as an Olympic alternate, touring with Simone Biles and other members of Team USA on the Gold Over America Tour, and hopping right into competition as a regular All-Around competitor for Arkansas this spring. Roberson was lights out on balance beam and floor, bringing energy and experience to the Gymbacks. She qualified to NCAAs as an individual All-Around competitor after Arkansas fell in the regional finals. She earned All-American honors on the balance beam, both at National Championships and for the regular season, and is returning to elite training during the NCAA offseason.
Florida Gators
2026 should see comebacks from Florida’s Kayla DiCello and Skye Blakely, who should join their teammate Selena Harris-Miranda as huge contenders in the 2026 season. Blakely returned to limited competition during the 2025 season, but DiCello was sidelined the whole season after rupturing her Achilles at 2024 Olympic Trials and later requiring foot surgery. Both DiCello and Blakely were considered top prospects for the 2024 Olympic Team before their untimely injuries and have the skills and consistency to be major factors for Florida next season. DiCello's return to the vault lineup would be a huge asset for the Gators, who struggled on the event at this year's national semi-finals.
Transfer portal
eMjae Frazier, previously at Cal, and former Georgia Bulldog Naya Howard are both currently in the transfer portal but depending on where they land next year, could make a big splash. Frazierbroke the single season NCAA scoring record as a sophomore in 2024. (This record has since been broken by Oklahoma’s Jordan Bowers and Faith Torrez.) She's a rockstar in the classroom too, graduating from the University of California, Berkeley in three years, and will be pursuing a master’s degree at her next program. Howard will have one year of eligibility for her new program and can make an immediate impact on any program, with a career high of at least a 9.900 on all four events.
Big 10
The Big Ten should see a lot of stellar gymnastics from MSU’s Sage Kellerman, OSU’s Tory Vetter, Washington’s Mary McDonough, and Illinois’s Chloe Cho. This season, Kellerman earned All-American honors on both events she competed at NCAAs- vault and uneven bars. Vetter recently announced that she will return to Ohio State for her fifth year after being named to the First Team All Big Ten Gymnastics Team this year. Cho was named the Big Ten Freshman of the Year and McDonough advanced all the way to the National Championships as an individual All-Around competitor, despite Washington failing to qualify to regional competition.
Smaller programs
From smaller programs, expect a splash from Towson’s Isabella Minervini, a regional individual All-Around competitor, and Fisk’s Morgan Price, who has broken a score of records, including sweeping all five individual national titles at this year’s Women's Collegiate Gymnastics National Invitational Championships, defending her All-Around title from last year. She also became the first HBCU gymnast to ever earn a 10.0 with an uneven bars routine earlier this season.
Despite a large graduating class of gymnasts, NCAA gymnastics has a bright future. Between rising upperclassmen, this year's exceptional freshmen class, and a new class of recruits, the 2026 season will be star-studded and full of exciting routines. Whether you're a gymnastics die-hard, new to the sport, or somewhere in between, each conference has plenty of new and returning gymnasts to root for. Gymnasts will begin training with their teams this summer, and competition will start again in January 2026.