Cal Women’s Gymnastics earn school-record in All-Pac-12 awards

The awards keep rolling in for the Cal Women’s Gymnastics team after they saw Kyana George and Maya Bordas earn First-Team All-American honors earlier this week.

Joining George and Bordas on the postseason hardware lists were Milan Clausi, Nevaeh DeSouza and Emi Watterson, all who earned All-Pac-12 honors.

George, Bordas, DeSouza and Clausi grabbed First-Team honors while Watterson earned honorable mention for her efforts on the uneven bars. From our writeup earlier this week on Bordas and George, we’ll let their national prowess do the talking on how terrific their seasons were:

George, the junior, ranked top 10 nationally as an all-around gymnast, setting program-best NGS scores with her 39.505 all-around score. Hailing from McKinney Boyd High School in McKinney, Texas, George is no stranger to awards as during her freshman season, she earned two Pac-12 Freshman of the awards and had the second-most top-three finishes that year of any Golden Bear gymnast.

This season, George was named a Pac-12 Gymnast of the Week on three separate occasions and won a team-high 17 events as well as 27 top-three finishes. Her accolades from this season continued with five all-around titles in just eight meets and including five vault wins, four floor titles and three wins on the balance beam.

Bordas took home her two honors in her second season with the Golden Bears. Hailing from Westlake High School in Austin, Texas, Bordas had four event titles and nine top-three finishes during her freshman season, setting the stage for even bigger things this year. She followed her freshman season up with the highest ever NGS score on the uneven bars from a Cal gymnast at 9.910, ranking 11th in the country in the process. She earned her all-around honors by ranking 15th nationally and claiming eight total even titles including four on the bars.

Their three combined All-American honors matched Toni-Ann Williams’ three awards she secured in 2015 as the most ever for a season in Cal women’s gymnastics history.

DeSouza was also named to the First-Team for her efforts as an all-around gymnast. She was named the Pac-12 Freshman of the Year for her efforts as well and has earned some national fame as well.

DeSouza was also a First-Team All-Pac-12 as well, earning her first-team honors in the all-around exercise. She led the Pac-12 freshmen with an all-around average score of 39.475, good enough to also rank third nationally among all freshmen.

She had three top-three finishes in 2020 and three event titles including on the balance beam against Stanford.

Her efforts didn’t stop there either as she actually ranked sixth among all Pac-12 gymnasts this year with her all-around score and that ranked her 20th nationally among all gymnasts. DeSouza now represents the fourth Cal freshman to win the Freshman of the Year Award over the past eight seasons.

Clausi represents the fell winner of the Freshman of the Year award, having won it a season ago, and ahead of DeSouza. Clausi earned First-Team All-Pac-12 honors on the vault this season after finishing sixth in the conference with an average score of 9.885. She hit her career-best score o 9.95 twice this past season and she won the NorCal Classic in the process.

Watterson earned what was her second straight All-Pac-12 award, finishing with the Pac-12’s eighth-best average on the uneven bars. She won the uneven bars four times this past season and had a career-best 9.975 in 2020, earning her the second-best score in school history in the event.

Congratulations girls, way to represent the Golden Bears!