Mizzou Gym takes Tulsa for SEC Championships looking for more “magic” than “tragic”

Fresh off their first victory on The Plains to end the regular season, we’ve reached the postseason, folks, and the #9 Missouri Tigers are READY to make some noise. It’s SEC Championships time!

Per Mizzou Head Coach Shannon Walker, who the media spoke to on Wednesday, “We’re excited. I mean, man, the season flies by and we’re already at the end point. But I was really pleased on how we finished out the season. You know, especially in SEC competition, we opened with three or four really tough meets.”

He continued. “They’re all tough, but we went 0-3 there going into that meet with Florida and then we turned it around and like 4-1 on the back end, so just really pleased with some of the toughness and in the growth in our team, and excited to go to Tulsa this weekend and continue to get better.”

Because they finished seventh in the SEC, they will be in the afternoon session of the two-part meet, facing off against no. 6 Georgia, no. 8 Arkansas, no. 16 Auburn and no. 19 Kentucky. The goal, of course, is to win this session then also take out any number of teams in the evening session.

In last year’s SEC meet, the #7 Tigers recorded their highest ever conference champs score, 197.400, beating the 197.250 they set the year prior. In their first appearance in the evening session, Mizzou finished fourth overall, tying their highest score of the season, 49.575 on bars.

Let’s get started.

Meet Info

When: Saturday, March 21, 2026

Where: Bank of Oklahoma (BOK) Center | Tulsa, Oklahoma

Time: 2 p.m. CST

TV: SECN for main feed | SEC+ for individual apparatus feeds

Stats: https://scores.virti.us/?s=I6uRyuMJx3

MIZZOU ORDER OF EVENTS: BARS —> BEAM —> FLOOR —> VAULT —> BYE*

^{_{*with five teams, there’s a rotation ‘bye’ for each team, and Mizzou’s is last, which means no weird break in between where your energy could come down.}}

The leo: A moment for the new leo. ✨so pretty✨

[update when it’s released— Whitney wouldn’t remind me of which new one was coming this week and at Regionals…]

About the Venue:

The BOK (Bank of Oklahoma) Center, per its website, is a 19.199-seat capacity arena in downtown Tulsa that opened in 2008 that is the primary home of the Tulsa Oilers of the ECHL and the Tulsa Oilers of the Indoor Football League. It is the former the WNBA’s Tulsa (Detroit) Shock and the Tulsa Talons of the Arena Football League. It’s played host to the OKC Thunder’s preseason games, as well as several rounds of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, Big 12 Wrestling Championships, NCAA Wrestling Championships and Dallas Stars NHL neutral site games. It looks super nice!

This meet, of course, will be set up podium-style, and have four judges. While the Tigers have some familiarity with this environment already as it was a similar set-up to Zou to the Lou from the previous two years, they did not take part in a podium meet this year.

The Tigers have had an opportunity to practice beam on podium, however, due to the generosity of a donor (Shannon’s former club coach) who got the materials to have a beam podium constructed in the Tiger Performance Center. Funnily enough, Shannon said, the guy offered to supply a whole podium for the team. “I don’t think Dennis Gates would love if I put the whole thing in there,” Shannon joked.

“But we could put a podium in the gym and it would be really cool for balance beam. I thought that would be a good event because I think that one can — they all post their own unique challenges — but I think beam was a little bit different bounce there, just visual… So he dropped off enough stuff and got our facilities guys to help us out and put it together. And so we’ve been training on it for the last few weeks. Obviously the intention is to mimic what we see at SEC Championships and NCAA Championships and just get a little better prepared as we move into that time of the season.”

Last Time On The Mats

When we last saw our Tigers, they wrapped up their regular season with a W over Auburn, 197.325 to 196.700 in front of a crowd of 9,121 (well, that’s the sold out attendance, and who knows what it really was) at Neville Arena. I’m paying most attention to scores and order here, as I’m closely monitoring this for postseason. You can read my thoughtful recap here.

FIRST ROTATION— BARS 49.425 | Makayla Green— 9.90 (SH) | Lauren Macpherson— 9.80 | Olivia Kelly— 9.875 | Maiya Terry— 9.90 | Hannah Horton— 9.825 | Kimarra Echols— 9.925 | (EXH) Kaia Tanskanen- 9.725

After 1: MIZ 49.425 — AUB 49.200

SECOND ROTATION— VAULT: 49.325 | Kaia Tanskanen— 9.80 | Railey Jackson— 9.875 | Kennedy Griffin— 9.80 | Hannah Horton— 9.90 | Kimarra Echols— 9.875 | Elise Tisler— 9.875 | (EXH) Dakota Essenpries— 9.75

After 2: MIZ 98.750 — AUB 98.350

THIRD ROTATION— FLOOR: 49.300 | Railey Jackson— 9.825 | Elise Tisler— 9.825 | Ayla Acevedo— 9.075 | Kaia Tanskanen— 9.85 | Kennedy Griffin— 9.90 | Hannah Horton— 9.90 | (EXH) Maiya Terry— 9.775

After 3: MIZ 148.050 — AUB 147.400

FINAL ROTATION— BEAM 49.275 | Railey Jackson— 9.875 | Hayli Westerlind— 9.80 (debut) | Kaia Tanskanen— 9.80 | Olivia Kelly— 9.90 (CH-tie) | Grace Anne Davis— 9.175 | Lauren Macpherson— 9.90 | (EXH) Kennedy Griffin— 9.725

After 4: Mizzou takes the W! MIZ 197.325 to ARK 196.700

Get to Know Your Favorite Team

If it’s not Missouri, what the hell are you even doing here? I kid…

From following this team the last few years, it’s obvious this team has a great culture that is felt by all and facilitated by head coach, Shannon Welker, associate head coach & bars coach, Whitney Snowden, assistant coach & choreographer, Jackie Terpak, and beam coach, Lacey Rubin. It hasn’t always been this way a while back, but currently, there’s no one better in my mind, which is why they had such success in the portal in getting some really under-the-radar transfers the past few years to bolster the rotations and why they had such success in their freshmen recruiting.

Missouri, as it has already been mentioned, has had a good season, and should this weekend go well, they are on track to finish the regular season with all four apparatuses ranked in the top 10 all season for the first time ever. We haven’t seen the best of this team yet, and so the anticipation is killing me for them to get there. Their high scores aren’t quite where they were last season, and some of that I feel like is due to lackluster judging— with six home meets, one would expect an iota of home cooking at some point, but instead, it oftentimes seemed to benefit their opponents (cough, cough LSU).

The Tigers averaged a 197.155 across five meets (3 home) in January, 197.192 across three meets (2 home) in February, and 197.350 across three meets (2 away) in March. Below are the Tigers’ individual rotation breakdowns for each meet. I’ll go through the info a bit more thoroughly for Mizzou’s opponents, as I’m not showing all their graphs. But here is Mizzou’s in all its glory. Draw whatever conclusions you’d like, but I like the upward trends we’re seeing. Ignore last week’s floor rotation score, please.

After the Oklahoma meet, Shannon said, “We’ve had some really great individual performances, and I think we’re really trying to make this shift to group excellence like in, you know, that event excellence right there on every event. I think that’s something that’s a little bit of a transition we’re pushing towards right now.”

I’d contend that the Tigers are still looking for this— group excellence. It was kind of addressed again in Wednesday’s pre-SEC media availability. The teams at this stage, as referenced in the title, are looking for more magic than tragic, Shannon called it.

“Consistency wins, right? And so you just want to try to tighten up the range that your kids compete in, quite honestly. And you know, it’s great if they can score a 9.95, but if the next turn they go 9.65, that’s, you know, I’d almost rather take the 9.85 consistency right there. And so we really just try to focus on consistency and training and whatever we do, it’s the law of averages… That’s what really preach and coach by.”

Quick Comparisons

Know Thy Enemies

_{^{*many of the facts — NOT ALL OF THEM — below are copied from my previews if it sounds familiar}}

“I know we’re not in the evening session this year,” Shannon said, “But that session has got the, you know, that’s number 1,2,3 and 4 in the country. And it’s number 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the SEC, right? I mean, pretty impressive stuff. And the afternoon session’s no slouch, either. I mean, there’s some good teams in there as well. So, you know, there’s three top 10 teams in that afternoon session. So it’ll be great competition there, and that’ll be really great preparation for us as we move into the first round of the regional weekend.”

Georgia

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Georgia is having a good season, despite the loss of star Lily Smith in the past few weeks. They have one 198 score, achieved at a podium meet like one in early March, Elevate the Stage. They also have five scores of 197.5-plus to go with just one sub-197 score. They also have five scores in the 197.0-197.3 range. If you put all their highest scores together, their highest magic score right now is 199.125 (w/ Lily included). Obviously, that’s not happening, but interesting to see, nonetheless.

As of each apparatus, Georgia has just one sub-49 score on vault, earned in Week 2 (their Week 1), but mostly score in the 49.35-49.4 range. On bars, their 49.625 was a crazy score on March 8, and is unlike anything else they’ve ever scored. They mostly fall in the 49.4 range. On beam, they have one sub-49 score and lots of peaks and valleys. White they’ve been 49.5-49.55 three times, they also been 49.0-49.175 four times, so I’m not sure what this GymDog beam team is. And finally, on floor, even with Lily out, this team is performing quite well on FX, with all of their scores 49.325 or higher. Their season-high 49.725 is a full tenth higher than the other scores, and they mainly are in the 49.55-49.6 range. Georgia, like Missouri, is a #FloorSchool.

KEY ADDITIONS: Kelise Woolford (UB, BB) | CaMarah Williams (VLT, BB, FX) | Autumn Reingold (UB) | Brooke Pierson (VLT, UB) | Avery Moll (VLT) | Jaydah Battle (VLT, return from injury)

KEY LOSSES: Naya Howard (VLT/UB/BB, transfer to Michigan State) | Zora Morgan (BB, left team in January) | Anaya Smith (VLT, grad) | Sidney Fitzgerald (UB/FX) | Sadie Jane Berry (UB, transfer to Ohio State)
Regular Season Matchup: The Tigers traveled to Athens and some scoring discrepancies aside — Mizzou’s floor was every bit as good as Georgia’s and their beam errors were judged more harshly than the Dawgs— they earned their season high at the time, 197.300
You can read my recap here.

Arkansas

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Much like Mizzou, the Razorbacks have two scores this season of 197.5 or higher, with four of their five highest scores achieved in the friendly confines of Bud Walton Arena. They have one sub-196 score and two sub-197 scores, though none since Valentine’s Day weekend. Four of their scores fall in the 197.1-197.25 range. If you put all their highest scores together, their highest magic score right now is 198.75.

For the specific apparatuses (apparati?), the vault squad’s high score, an astonishing 49.625, is more than 0.2 higher than any other rotation score, and they consistently score in the 49.35 range. On bars, they have two sub-49 rotation scores, including in their final regular season meet. Most often, I’d say Ark bars can be found in the 49.2-49.25 range. On beam, they have no sub-49 scores and have three 49.4o-plus scores, mainly falling in the 49.3-49.4 range. Finally, on floor, they have one sub-49 score, with three scores in the 49.5-49.65 scores, including two scores of 49.60-plus. They consistently fall in the 49.4-49.6 range on FX.

Individually, Arkansas is the only team in this session that has a perfect 10 this season, and it’s from Morgan Price, who also was recently named an AAI Award finalist, which goes to the best senior gymnast in the NCAA (who was nominated). From the Arkansas site:

In 2025, Price became the first HBCU gymnast to ever score a Perfect 10, on bars, and continued to put herself on the collegiate gymnastics radar nationally and beyond.

Price has been a star since her Arkansas debut and has scored 9.900+ on vault, bars, and beam. She has continued to make history with the Gymbacks, which included getting the school’s first-ever Perfect 10, on vault, on Feb. 20. With the mark, she became one of only five known athletes to score a Perfect 10 at two different universities and the first to score a program’s first-ever Perfect 10 at two different schools (Arkansas and Fisk). She has also earned a 9.975 on bars twice, matching the school record and becoming the first Gymback to get the score on the event more than once.

Morgan has been consistently ranked in the top 10 on vault and bars this season and set a new career high of 39.600 all-around in January, one of the highest totals in the country this season. She has earned 15 total event and all-around titles: five on bars, three each on vault and all-around and one apiece on beam and floor.

Outside of the gym, Morgan is a dedicated member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc., a sorority part of The Divine Nine. She is a legacy Divine Nine member as her mother, Marsha, is a fellow AKA and her late father, Chris, was part of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity.

KEY ADDITIONS: Morgan Price (Fisk transfer, AA) | Alison Cucci (freshman, AA) | Avalon Campbell (freshman, UB) | Addison Bare (freshman) | Bradley Burton (freshman) | Riley Jandorf (freshman) | Avery King (freshman
KEY LOSSES: Dakota Essenpries— transfer to MIZ (VT) | Kaitlyn Ewald (UB, BB) | Kalyxta Gamiao (BB, FX) | Maddie Jones (UB, BB, FX) | Mati Waligora (UB, BB, FX)

Auburn

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The Other/Lesser Tigers (sorry, Auburn) have three scores of 197.1 or higher this season, along with a whopping nine 196 scores… it’s been a weird season for Jeff Graba’s crew, and it doesn’t help that they are without the ultra talented Sophia Bell, who is out for the season now with an achilles injury. Vault is the only event that the Tigers have not earned a sub-49 score, though they peaked a bit too soon, it seems, earning their highest score of the season in their first meet, and didn’t hit another 49.4 score until March 8. Most of their scores have fallen between 49.2-49.3. Bars has been the team’s biggest challenge, with four sub-49 scores. Their most common scores on the event fall in the 49.1 range. Beam may be Auburn’s strongest event, consistency-wise at least, with one sub-49 score, and three of their last five scores in the 49.3 range. Floor has been very up-and-down, and is another event that Bell took part in. The Tigers have three sub-49 scores on floor this season, but most of their scores fall between 49.3-49.45. If you put all their highest scores together, their highest magic score right now is 198.40.

Kentucky

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If Auburn has had a weird season, Kentucky’s has been just bizarre. Look, they lost A LOT in the offseason, but wow… they’ve taken quite a tumble literally and figuratively. On the good side, the Cats have four scores in the 197s this season, but then they also have three 196s in the mid-to-upper range, a 195, and (gasp!) two 194 scores in the first two meets. In the final meet of the season, they were up in the lower 197s, so there is hope they’ve gotten it together. On vault, Big Blue Nation has one sub-49 score, but are on an upwards trend, earning their highest score of the season in the final meet. Most of their scores are in the 49.1-49.2 range. On bars, they also have just one sub-49 score, but it’s just been a low scoring event for them overall, with most of their scores falling in the 49.0-49.1 range, which is also where they fell in Week 11. Beam is probably the Cats’ most improved event, and after a disaster in their first three meets — they scored a 47.0 at one point! — they’ve been on the upswing each week, consistently in the 49.2-49.35 range. And finally floor, where they started the year with a sub-49 in their first meet, but since the fourth meet, have consistently been in the 49.3-49.4 range. Their highest score, a 49.5, was in the last meet. If you put all their highest scores together, their highest magic score right now is 198.15.

KEY ADDITIONS: Callie Gardner (Towson transfer, VLT/FX) /Gabby Van Frayen (freshman, UB/BB/FX) | Sabrina Nemcek (freshman, UB) | Addisyn Hofseth (freshman, VLT) | Cadence Gormley (back from injury, VLT/BB)
KEY LOSSES: Isabella Magnelli (VLT, BB, FX) | Makenzie Wilson (VLT) | Skylar Kilhough-Wilhelm (AA) | Jillian Procasky (AA) | Annie Reigert (UB) | Hailey Davis (UB, FX)
A Season of Change: Kentucky lost 53% of its routines from a season ago, graduating six seniors, five of whom were All-Americans. They return 11 athletes from the 2025 season, including just one senior. 13 athletes on the 2026 roster are freshmen and sophomores so this is a young team… and may account for the massive inconsistencies?
Vault Squad: Looking at last year’s recap, I was reminded that Kentucky was the team of cool, different vaults. This year is no exception, and is a good mix of YFs, Y1.5s and others. Noonan competes an upgraded Yurchenko Pike Half Off that looks super cool, and Gardner & Cashion compete a Pike Front Half (Kaia’s vault). Vault has been a strong suit for the Cats in the last three years, ranking in the top 6. They have scored 49+ on every vault rotation going back to January 2021.
Roster Make-up: UGA has three KCMO natives on their roster, including Kara Eaker, Ja’Free Scott and freshman CaMarah Williams. They also have two international athletes in Csenge Bácskay (Budapest, Hungary) and Aberdeen O’Driscoll (Léglise, Belgium).
Only Specific Nicknames Allowed: The UK media guide specifically spells out that the Gymnastics team should NOT be referred to as the GymKats or GymCats or my personal fave, the “Flippin’ Kittens.” (LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL). They may be referred to as the University of Kentucky, Kentucky, UK, Wildcats or Cats. I’ve never wanted to use the name Flippin’ Kittens so badly, y’all.

Analysis

Presenting… my life’s work. It’s all led up to this moment— my master list (I said this same statement the past two years too, so just go with it). I went through Road to Nationals (a great website) and ranked the highest scores by each of the five teams (Mizzou, Georgia, Arkansas, Auburn and Kentucky) and then secondarily by their national qualifying score. The decision on alternates, which are listed w/ **alt, are based on RTN data and for Mizzou, what lineups Shannon has been using. And it’s color-coded by school in their team colors, because obviously it is.

Below the chart is some more Mizzou-specific notes.

“For the most part [this season], we’ve started on bars,” Shannon said when I asked about the order of events. “And so we just felt like that was a comfortable place to start, and we’ve been doing a good job there. So that was, I think it was kind of easy.” He continued. “I actually like the rotation we got, I almost I may have even picked that one, even if I had the first pick in that round, quite honestly, because I do like the fact that you can just restart. We don’t have to deal with the buy, you know, because if you get some mojo going and some momentum, you want to just keep it right, that break in there.”

“The only thing I don’t like,” he said, “Is not being on the floor in the last rotation, because I do think, unfortunately, scores tend to elevate, and I like to be on the floor in that last rotation. So it’s a little bit of a give and take. I really like the rotation we have, and I think that’s going to serve us.”

Hey, at least they aren’t starting on floor, like all of last postseason!

BARS: Bars seems set to me with Makayla, Lauren, Olivia, Maiya, Hannah and Kimarra. At Friday’s practice, sticks seemed a little hard to come by, but it was just like, a small step, not an unwieldy one. The alternates, per Friday’s session are Kaia and Rayna. _{^{(there’s more videos in this twitter/x thread, btw)}}

BEAM: The beam rotation looked a bit different the last couple weeks with Amy out then last week, Addi was out as well, but Addi at least is expected to be back this weekend and looked great on the beam on Wednesday. Two weeks ago vs. Georgia, the lineup was Railey/Kaia/Lauren/Grace Anne/Olivia/Addi. After Friday’s practice, I expect it to be the same, but with either GAD or Hayli in the fourth slot.

“We also preach you got to be 7-8-9 people deep on an event, and you have to be adaptable,” Shannon said. “I actually thought beam was one of our best rotations when we were at Auburn last weekend, you know, to close on beam on the road… And to do it with a brand-new lineup… A lot of people stepped up in those situations right there and did a nice job. So that was exciting. Now I would like to get our regular personnel back in there. With that being said, Addi should be back this weekend.

Amy is a little TBD. She’s got a little strain in her leg muscle, and I think we’re just trying to make sure that if I have to pick and have her ready, we want her ready for NCAA Championships, Regionals and those things, so if we have to forego SECs to make sure she’s in the best spot, we’ll do that now. If we can get her back, we’re going to use her, right? She’s ready to go. But so I think it’ll just be kind of, we’ll play that by ear a little bit right there.” On Friday, we did see Amy on beam with her upper leg in what looked like some sort of compression sleeve, but my colleague Ben and I thought she didn’t seem to have full range of motion, so the jury’s out on if we will see her come Saturday.

FLOOR: The Fab Floor, who was slightly less “fab” at Auburn, will surely be back on track with likely their normal lineup of Railey/Elise/Ayla/Kaia/Kennedy/Hannah. Based on Friday, we thought Kimarra looked great and it’s possible she could get in, depending upon how Ayla looks in warmups. We also saw Maiya and Rayna practicing. Maiya especially looked strong. Railey’s landings looked great.

VAULT: Expect to see the same vault lineup as last week, Shannon said. That is Kaia/Railey/Kennedy/Hannah/, Kimarra and Elise. On Friday we also saw vaults from Ayla, Dakota, and a new entrant, freshman Bryce Kupbens, who was working a Yurchenko Full. While not seeing any action in the 2026 season aside from the B&G meet (she scored a 9.80), she was vaulting A LOT in Wednesday’s open practice.

Last week they tied a season high with no sticks. “I thought they did a really nice job. I know we didn’t get any sticks, but I thought they really managed their landings very well, maybe a half tenth and that’s what we talk about. Like, if we don’t get the stick, and again, it can’t be magic or tragic. It can’t be a stick or a big step, right? Like we got to find a way to manage those right there and manage those deductions because clearly we did really, a pretty good job and didn’t have the sticks, as you mentioned.”

“And I think, I think they’re getting closer. I think they’re getting better over there on vault. And, yeah, I’m excited for them. I think that’s been a big plus for us this year in comparison to last year, kind of, from a consistency standpoint.”

OVERALL: “Every year gets a little bit better,” Shannon said. “We’re able to lift the bar just a little bit more and a little more, right? If we want to compete for a national title, you’re not going to make these monster strides every year. A lot of years, it’s just little things that start to stack up, because we’re in that last 3-5% of our journey right here. That is the hardest part. That’s way harder, right? That’s way harder than the first 10%, 20%… so you know, it’s just little increments and recognizing where we’re making some gains and celebrating those gains, too.”

“If you look at our team scores,” Shannon said, “our average is really good. If you look at Road to Nationals and if you look at our NQS versus our average score, they are like, almost identical… That tells me that we are competing at a really consistent level right there. Now, I would like to be a little higher on that top range of the score, but you know, you can just do the best you can with the team you have.”