History
Gymnastics was one of the dozen women's sports for which the NCAA established national championships beginning with the 1981-82 school year. The first Division I championship meet was hosted in the spring of 1982 by the University of Utah, which has dominated competition, winning nine of the fifteen team championships to date.
A Division II championship meet was also held until 1987, when it was discontinued. Since then, there has been a single national collegiate gymnastics championship event.
Athletes and teams qualify through preliminary competition in five regions. The winning team in each region advances and seven other teams are selected as at-large entries on the basis of their regional scores. In addition, the top twelve competitors in each event who are not on qualifying teams advance to the finals.
Because women's gymnastics styles and judging at the world-class level now favors young teen-agers, college gymnasts are virtually unknown to the public. Some college meets are televised, but not during prime time, and unfortunately the top collegiate competitors are "too old" to be Olympic material.