Aaron Mah

The Bears haven’t won a male gymnastics title since 1998. Can 2020 be the year they bring a championship back to Berkeley?

While neither team victories nor titles were in the cards for the Bears, there were plenty of individual accomplishments to be celebrated.

This weekend in Illinois at the NCAA championships, the nation’s top 12 teams and highest-scoring individual gymnasts will compete for the chance to call themselves the best in the country.

The women’s team is coming off of a fourth-place finish at the Pac-12 Championships, which bumped Cal up in the national rankings to No. 15.

Even with all of the successes of the weekend, the performance was not enough for the women to finish in the top two to advance to the NCAA championships.

It was a weekend full of personal and team bests as the men’s and women’s gymnastics teams traveled to their dual away meets.

The Bears advanced an impressive seven individuals on to the NCAA finals despite the team coming in last among six in its qualifying session the day before. This is more than double the number of athletes that went on to represent Cal in last year's NCAA Championship.

This will be the Bears’ fifth consecutive trip to the qualifiers, but their first time in those five years entering the competition at the bottom.

Although still unable to beat No. 1 Oklahoma or No. 4 Stanford, No. 12 Cal men’s gymnastics did manage to outperform No. 11 Air Force in the teams’ first faceoff this year.

Going above and beyond all expectations, No. 12 Cal men’s gymnastics not only finally notched a win, but did so with some of their best scores of the year to wrap up their regular season.