It was a hard-fought victory for the OU gymnastics team over the Michigan Wolverines in Ann Arbor last week. The scoreboard said it all, as the no. 1 Sooners secured the win 321.850 to 320.650 against the no. 5 Wolverines. However, while they displayed their talent on the mat, this was followed by a punishing winter storm that trapped the team on their road home.

As reported by KOCO 5 News, an emotional Sooners head coach Mark Williams detailed this entire saga, saying, “Half an hour ago and then there’s a two and a half hour delay because of some mechanical thing on the airplane. So it was pretty crazy, but I’m really proud of my team because they kept their spirits up.” So, what really took place?

Their flight from Detroit was canceled, but then a plan was made to let them fly to Dallas. There, the Sooners would’ve taken a bus to Norma. However, this plan didn’t work, as it was derailed by another cancellation.

Finally, the OU gymnastics team managed to secure a flight to Atlanta, but the journey was with more complications. Indeed, the team missed out on their connecting flight to Oklahoma City, for which they had to spend a whole night in a hotel. And when at last they were on the flight the next day, which also apparently went through a few issues, as mentioned by their head coach, causing another delay before they reached home.

The Sooners’ win at the Cliff Keen Arena on January 24 against the Wolverines was a statement in itself. With this victory, OU gymnastics became the first team to defeat Michigan in that venue since 2019. Redshirt senior Fuzzy Benas (floor exercise), redshirt sophomore Brandon Zepeda-Orth (high bar), and freshman Nathan Roman (parallel bars) captured individual event titles to lead the Sooners to this victory, making their head coach proud.

“I’m really happy for my team. We just hung in there. I don’t know that we did anything real special today and there weren’t a lot of huge routines out there, but we kept hanging in there and got the job done. We also didn’t have a whole lot of mistakes, so that’s also good,” Williams said following the match. So, how have the Sooners been in the current NCAA season?

The OU gymnastics team is the one to watch out for this campaign

The top-ranked OU gymnastics team has started the 2026 NCAA season with dominant performances. The Sooners kicked off the year with a huge victory at the Rocky Mountain Open in mid-January, sweeping the top spot against several programs.

Well, the annual men’s collegiate gymnastics meet hosted by the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs on January 17 featured elite programs like Oklahoma, Stanford, Nebraska, and Arizona State. Apart from the individual performances, what stood out for Oklahoma was their collective effort as a team.

Sasha Bogonosiuk, Colin Flores, Nathan Roman, Brigham Frentheway, and others contributed to a collective score of 323.950, which was enough to be at the top, with Stanford just a few points behind (320.750), followed by Nebraska (315.500), Air Force (302.100), and Arizona State (280.250).

So, following this victory against the Wolverines on their home turf, the Sooners will ready themselves for their next showdown against Greenville at McCasland Field House on February 1. It will be the team’s home opener, and the fans will be excited to see the top NCAA program in action.