She wrote down her dreams. Then Augusta’s Keira Wells lived them as NCAA champ
Months before Keira Wells ever soared down the runway in Fort Worth, before the judges flashed their scores and before she stood at the top of college gymnastics, she had already written the vision for her season down on paper.
At the team retreat for Oklahoma women’s gymnastics, coach K.J. Kindler handed each gymnast a notebook. The August native wrote down three goals on the back page and carried them with her all season.
Become a national champion on vault.
Help OU win another national championship.
Compete in three events on the sport’s biggest stage and help the Sooners win it there.
By the end of this past weekend in Fort Worth, Texas, Wells had done every one of them.
To her, that is still the part that almost feels too perfect to believe.
“I always had that page in the back of my mind to keep me hungry,” Wells said. “To be able to accomplish all of my goals and do it with this team, it was just so incredible.”
It is hard to script a better finish for Wells, who grew up training at 316 Gymnastics in Wichita.
Last Thursday night at the NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championships, Wells delivered the biggest vault of her life, a spectacular Yurchenko 1.5 that earned a 9.975 and the NCAA individual national championship. Then this past Saturday, she helped Oklahoma finish the job as a team champion once again, performing in three events as the Sooners edged LSU, 198.1625 to 198.0750, to win back-to-back national titles. Wells scored a 9.8875 on vault, a 9.05 on beam and a 9.90 on floor as Oklahoma held off LSU, Florida and Minnesota in a tense final.
That made Wells’ weekend about more than one dazzling moment. It was about a gymnast from Augusta becoming one of the biggest difference-makers on the most dominant program in college gymnastics.
“I still don’t think it’s fully set in,” Wells said almost 48 hours after OU won the national title again. “It’s so crazy to think back to all of those hard days, the 6 a.m. conditioning and the two-a-day practices. I wouldn’t change it for anything.”
And it all started with one vault.
Wells’ title-winning routine came in the very first spot of the second semifinal, an unforgiving position even for an accomplished vaulter. Lead-off competitors are often there to set the tone, not necessarily to post the highest score of the session. Add in that she was the very first gymnast to vault in that entire semifinal, before the judges had seen anyone else, and Wells knew a monster score would be difficult to get.
That made the 9.975 all the more remarkable.
Wells said the moment that settled her came just before she sprinted down the runway, when she glanced to the side and saw her teammates — especially the seniors whose college careers were nearly over.
“I just looked to the side and saw all of my team,” Wells said. “It just reminded me, ‘I’m doing it for them.’”
Then came the run, the board, the table, the twist and the stuck landing that changed everything.
The vault itself unfolds so quickly it can feel almost impossible to process. But Wells said her mind is busy with tiny details as she charges down the runway. The biggest key for her is to “run tall.” That is not necessarily the main cue for every gymnast, but it is essential for her own timing.
“So many gymnasts take off running as hard as they can, but if I do that, then I get too close to the board and it throws off all of my timing,” Wells said. “As long as I run tall, punch the board and see the table, I know I’m going to have a good chance of sticking it.”
It is the chain reaction of vaulting at the highest level. A clean punch into the springboard creates the power. Finding the table correctly allows a gymnast to block off it in control. And if those things happen, the landing becomes manageable, even in the most pressurized moment of a career.
Wells made it look almost easy. It was anything but.
“It’s a blind landing, so to be able to stick it in that moment at the right time…,” Wells said, trailing off as she searched for a way to describe it. None came easily. “It really was indescribable.”
The timing of it made it even sweeter. Wells said she had only stuck that vault twice in actual competition all season before nationals. She picked the biggest possible stage for the third.
Her routine also served as the launch point for what Wells called the “most amazing” vault rotation she had ever seen. Oklahoma backed up her title-winning score with a record-breaking event performance that helped set the tone for the rest of the semifinal. The Sooners’ vault rotation became one of the defining moments of the meet and by the time Oklahoma advanced to Saturday’s final, the momentum Wells created was impossible to miss.
But the weekend was not only about vault.
Wells also earned All-American honors this season on vault as a first-team selection and on beam as a second-team pick. In the national final, she showed why her value to Oklahoma extends beyond one event. She delivered three routines in the national final, helping the Sooners secure another trophy and further cement their dynasty. For a gymnast whose third preseason goal was simply to be trusted in three events on championship night, that mattered almost as much as the hardware itself.
But before she could become one of the top NCAA gymnasts in the country, Wells first had to learn her skills back home.
“Growing up in Augusta, it helped me find my love and passion for the sport,” Wells said. “It helped me get to a spot where I could be in position to be recruited by OU and join them, so they could help me continue my career and reach my goals. So it was a very important part of my life. I wouldn’t be able to be here right now without that foundation and those experiences.”
Her rise adds another major chapter to the area’s gymnastics history, as Wells joined Maize graduate Diandra Milliner, who shared the 2013 NCAA vault championship and also helped Alabama win two team national titles.
Wells said she has been overwhelmed by the support she has received from her family, friends and fans back in Kansas.
“Sometimes you kind of forget all of the support that you have and all of the people who are watching you back home,” Wells said. “It means so much to me to see that support from not just the Sooner community, but also the Kansas community. It’s just amazing to know how many people have my back as I’m trying to achieve my dreams.”
Months ago, Wells put three dreams on paper.
By the end of this past weekend, she was living every one of them.
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