Chio’s Challengers: Previewing the 2026 Individual Titles

The 2026 season may go down as the Year of Chio. Few people have dominated coverage and headlines for their consistency in the way Kailin Chio has throughout the 2026 season. It would’ve been tough for anyone to follow the freshman season she had, but she has exceeded all possible expectations by miles. In 2025, Kailin won the NCAA vault championship after sticking her vault and scoring a 9.9750. With the way her 2026 has gone, there’s one question worth asking: can Kailin Chio sweep the national championships?

In my opinion, yes. It’s entirely possible that Kailin has a monster day and gets massive scores which nobody surpasses. I don’t think it’s highly likely or even probable, though. First, six-judge panels create less precise scoring because of scores in between the quarter-tenths. A great example came in 2024 when Aleah Finnegan won the floor title with a 9.9625 while eight other gymnasts tied for second at 9.9500. Second, this field is stacked with gymnasts capable of doing as well as she can.

LSU is competing in the afternoon session of nationals at 3:30 p.m. on April 16, and that means nobody’s going to know if she’s won a natty unless she gets a 10 or until the second meet, which begins at 8:00 p.m., ends. Over the course of the day, there will be up to 224 routines from the eight teams to qualify to nationals and the 19 additional individuals. In each section, I’ll mention three of the biggest threats to Kailin Chio winning that championship. Sections will be put in order from the title she’s least favored to win to the one she’s most favored to win, but the people mentioned in the section are not ordered.

Bars

Kailin Chio’s worst event is bars, an event on which she’s tied for 20th in the country. One thing that helps her and everyone else is that the top two gymnasts on bars missed nationals as did someone else tied for fifth. Another thing that may help is, sadly, Konnor McClain’s injury. Kailin’s main issue here is her consistency. Five of her nine scores below 9.900 and eight of her 15 scores below 9.925 have come on bars. There are also these people whom she has to deal with who can score better.

Individual qualifiers have had an uphill battle since the NCAA got rid of event finals in 2016, but Maggie Slife is built different. The Air Force junior is the first Falcon to make nationals ever after qualifying as the all-arounder out of Baton Rouge. She is an All-American on bars, has the same bars NQS as Konnor, and holds a season high of 9.975. She also gets the luxury of following Oklahoma’s incredible bars lineup. That said, individuals seem to be scored harsher than members of a team. Courtney Blackson can tell you from the experience of being robbed of the 2023 vault championship despite sticking hers cold.

Speaking of people who tend to get bonuses, let’s move to a Florida gymnast. In all seriousness, the Gators have a bars lineup to die for that has multiple people eyeing a natty of their own. If anyone tops my list of favorites for that title, it’d be Skye Blakely. Blakely, another star sophomore, has the best bars NQS of anybody at nationals with a 9.955, good for third overall. She picked up her first career bars 10 at the Tempe Regional semifinals, but she tends to score around 9.900-9.975 thanks to her ability to stick her dismount. If I had to pick anyone to win the title, it’d be her.

Jordan Chiles is going to come up a lot in this article for obvious reasons, and this is the first time she’ll get a spotlight. Fourth in the nation with a 9.950 bars NQS, Chiles is one of the most consistent bars workers in the country with just two scores below 9.900. This is one time where I think the evening session works against people in the afternoon. Bars is such a finicky event where there’s inconsistency in how judges deduct everything, and in my experience, they get looser in the evening. Chiles is great at bars, don’t get me wrong, but she’ll get a little bit more room for error than Kailin or the others I mentioned.

Floor

Floor is the only other event on which Kailin Chio failed to finish as the top ranked gymnast. She tied for fifth with Alabama’s Gabby Gladieux, somebody she doesn’t compete against since the Tide failed to qualify anyone. Kailin’s main issue on floor is on her first pass. Her full-in is massive, but sometimes she lands it with a low chest and other times she doesn’t have control. Floor is the only other event on which Kailin has more scores below 9.900, four, than she has 10s, three.

One of Kailin’s biggest threats is the person who goes right after her: Kaliya Lincoln. Kaliya is tied for second in the country on floor alongside Lily Smith and someone I’ll mention later. She just got her first career 10 in the Baton Rouge Regional final despite hopping on her final pass, but that’s not important. What is important is that she hits her routine like a freight train. Her only score below 9.925 came in the season opener. Eight of her 11 floor routines in 2026 have scored a 9.950 or better. If her passes are clean and she hits her Gogean well enough, she has a very good chance of scoring at least a 9.9750.

No LSU fan is going to care if Kaliya gets a natty over Kailin, but there are two people who will be competing on floor as good or better than her. The first is the third person in the three-way tie for second: Georgia’s CaMarah Williams. Williams should be in high school right now, but she graduated a semester early to join the GymDogs. That has worked out better than anybody could’ve imagined. She has just three scores below 9.900 all season and has competed in every meet. Her season high is a 9.975, but nobody would’ve complained if at least one had been a 10. She is a joy to watch and a consistent performer.

Jordan Chiles leads the nation on floor with a near-perfect 9.995 NQS. I apologize in advance for the following statement: she shouldn’t have such a high NQS because only one of her 10s was legit. Chiles could win the floor title with an imperfect routine because judges often overlook flaws in her routine. She’s had uncontrolled passes and bad leap series in her 10s in 2026. However, there’s a reason she had a 9.9875 to win the 2023 NCAA floor title and why she’s a huge threat to win that title again. When she’s locked in, she is unstoppable. She has used four different routines during the season to call back to her three prior seasons, and each one has had the same level of performance quality from the choreography to the gymnastics. Nobody will be shocked if she brings the house down yet again.

Beam

Kailin tied the NCAA record for the best beam NQS in history with a 9.995. She has been absolutely insane in 2026 with only one score below 9.950. It seems like she should win this title, but there are a couple things that make me hesitant about it. First of all, Konnor’s immaculate beam work has set up most of her 10s, and there hasn’t been an update on her status at the time of writing. Her routines are so good, they force judges to go 10 for Kailin after giving Konnor a 9.95. Second, Kailin has a couple of things in her routine that she can mess up. She sometimes has a slight lean in her acro series, and she sometimes bends her leg in her aerial. As I mentioned before, six-judge panels lead to less precise scoring because it all depends on how many judges notice a deduction on a given routine.

The second-best gymnast on beam in 2026 came from the same gym as the leader. Florida’s Selena Harris-Miranda is another alumna of Gymcats in Henderson, Nevada, and that’s quite evident if you watch them side-by-side. Harris-Miranda has yet to score lower than a 9.900 on beam in 2026, and that’s in part because she has stuck her dismount almost every time. She does her dismount just like Kailin and many other Gymcats alumnae like Delaynee Rodriguez of Kentucky and Niya Randolph of Southern Utah, and it works. Combine that with her impeccable ability to hit her leaps, and you have a candidate for a national championship. There is one issue working against Harris-Miranda, though: she’s in the first rotation. It’s not impossible to win a natty from the first rotation, but it’s very hard.

Faith Torrez of Oklahoma has the luxury of going in the penultimate beam rotation of the semifinals. Torrez is a masterful beam worker, too. She has two falls and two other sub-9.9s, but she’s third in the country for good reason. Her splits are fantastic, her acro skills are well arched, and her dismount can hit like a cannon blast. If Kailin has a 9.9500 or a 9.9625, Torrez could swoop in with a 9.9750 and snatch herself a championship.

One other person from the night session that could come from under the radar is UCLA’s Ciena Alipio. Alipio is in a three-way tie for fifth in the country on beam with a 9.950 NQS, and while Jordan Chiles is ahead by 0.005 in that regard, Chiles has also had issues with beam that have kept her from getting the 10 she needs for a gym slam. Alipio won the 2025 Big 10 beam title with the only perfect 10 of her career to date, and her 2026 season has been quite good. She has one fall and a second score below 9.900, but she has several 9.950s and a 9.975. She more than has the talent to do something like that again.

All-Around

Kailin is the top ranked all-arounder in the country with a 39.795 NQS and has been incredible all season. Lately, she’s been killing it at levels that don’t make sense. Her worst all-around score since February 13, in seven meets, is 39.750 from the Baton Rouge Regional Final. There are only four other gymnasts who scored at least 39.750 in any regular season meet in 2026. The only reason I don’t see this as her most likely individual championship is that there’s always a chance she has an off routine that hurts her score enough to get passed in the evening. Again, this isn’t about what’s probable, it’s about what’s possible.

One of those possibilities comes from Stanford’s Anna Roberts. Roberts is ranked fifth with a 39.630 NQS. A quick glance at her scores shows exactly why she deserves a mention. While Roberts tends to have AA scores in the 39.300-39.600 range, she has the capacity for incredible things. Roberts is the only other gymnast to have had a meet with multiple 10s in 2026, having scored 10s on vault and floor in a 39.725 performance on her senior day. On February 27 at Oregon State, Roberts broke the program all-around record with a 39.875. If everything falls into place, she could pull off a big upset.

Selena Harris-Miranda gets another mention here. She’s ranked sixth with a 39.605 NQS, but she hadn’t done many all-around appearances in the regular season to boost it. Harris-Miranda has competed in the all-around in the last five meets, and her worst score was a 39.650 at SECs that got weighed down by a 9.800 on vault, the event nobody hit that night. Her 39.850 against LSU is the highest AA score that anyone’s had since March began, and that’s because she hits bars, beam and floor at an extremely high level. If she’s on fire, she’ll be hard to catch.

Then there’s Jordan Chiles. Chiles was the top ranked all-arounder for the first eight weeks of the season before Kailin overtook her. She finished the season ranked second with a 39.785 NQS. She has yet to go below 9.800 on any of her 56 routines in 2026 and has just 12 scores below 9.900. I mentioned earlier about my issues with how she’s been judged, and some of that explains why she’s had fewer sub-9.900s than she probably should’ve. That’s something that could pop up, but it’s not something worth focusing on over her ability to hit. Half of her scores below 9.900 have come on beam, UCLA’s second event in the semis. That’s probably the make or break point for her championship hopes.

Vault

Kailin is the top ranked vaulter in the nation with a 9.980 NQS and has stuck all but two vaults she’s competed in 2026. Her two unstuck vaults came in podium meets, but she managed to get a podium stick at SECs. She also happens to be in the first rotation of nationals, the exact opposite place in which she won the 2025 vault title. I still think she’s most likely to defend her title when compared to the other titles for a simple reason: nobody else can vault like Kailin Chio. It has been a weird year for everyone on vault. The SEC Championship evening session finished with the only stuck vault of the night, a Kailin Chio 9.975. Oklahoma struggled on vault in their regional semi, Florida hasn’t been consistent with sticks, not even LSU can find consistency from the lineup. Kailin’s gotten to the point where she is getting a little bit of reputation scoring, and that’s fantastic. Any bit of help is vital.

If there’s any individual qualifier of any kind, either on vault or in the all-around, who could hit a vault to beat Kailin’s, it’s her old level 10 rival Avery Neff. The Utah sophomore qualified as an individual all-arounder after the Red Rocks missed nationals for the first time ever. She’s tied for eighth in the country on vault and hasn’t been very consistent with her scores. She has zero scores of either 9.950 or 9.975 and has just one 9.925. However, she has two 10s including the first perfect 10 of the 2026 season. If you go back and check her 10s, you’ll see why she could be a huge threat. When she nails her vault, she does it with a flawless technique. Combine that with being in the night session and if she hits, she could pull out a win.

Stanford’s Anna Roberts deserves another mention. I like to think of her as a defending vault champion, too, since she didn’t get to defend her crown last year. Roberts surprised everyone by winning the 2024 NCAA vault title outright with a 9.9500. Roberts has had a fantastic senior season for the Cardinal and is tied for 14th in the country on vault. She hasn’t been very consistent on the event with just four scores of at least 9.900. Crazier still, two of those four are 9.900s and the other two are 10s. Again, if she nails her vault and Kailin has an issue, it could give Roberts a second consecutive vault title.

I’ve tried to avoid doing anything like this, but Oklahoma’s vault lineup is too good for me to try and single out one person. The Sooners are the first team since 1998 Georgia (on bars) to have three gymnasts ranked in the top five on a single event. Keira Wells is tied for fifth, Mackenzie Estep is fourth and Addison Fatta is second. Wells has yet to score higher than a 9.950 in 2026, but she is also the second vaulter in their rotation. Her being ranked so highly despite her spot in the lineup speaks to her incredible consistency. Estep tends to be fourth in the lineup, and she has one 10 on the season alongside a 9.975. Fatta is the team’s anchor and is a big scorer. She has two scores below 9.900 this season thanks to her incredible form and ability to hit her landing. She has two 9.950s, two 9.975s and a 10, and she goes in the evening session. This lineup is deadly, and any one of the people they send out could hit the best vault of their life. That’s just the way things work.

Conclusion

2025 was a weird year for the individual titles because each winner was ranked near the top of the event they won. Jordan Chiles was the lowest ranked winner, and she was still tied for seventh on bars with an NQS 0.020 behind the national leader. It’s probable that someone who was solid and ranked around the top 30 or something comes in and snipes a natty this season. Hopefully, Kailin puts on another spectacular performance and does well. She doesn’t need to win an individual title, she just needs to do what she does best: help LSU be a great team.