DENVER – The University of Denver gymnastics team is ranked No. 23 in the final Road to Nationals rankings for the 2026 season, which were released on Monday.
Denver's final ranking of No. 23 matches its final NQS/regular-season ranking for the year. With DU's No. 23 final ranking, Denver has now held a top-25 national ranking at the end of 28 consecutive seasons – extending its streak of doing so in every year under Joy S. Burns Head Women's Gymnastics Coach
Melissa Kutcher-Rinehart.
Final team rankings are determined by teams' advancement and scores during the NCAA tournament – either at NCAA Regionals or NCAA Nationals – and are added to each team's final regular-season NQS. DU ended the regular season with an NQS of 196.383, which was added to its 195.950 from the NCAA Second Round, resulting in a postseason NQS of 392.333.
Final team event and individual rankings are determined solely by regular-season NQS.
During the 2026 season, Denver posted two wins over teams that finished ranked higher than DU in the final national rankings – highlighted by a win over now-No. 8 and NCAA Nationals qualifier Stanford. All seven of DU's losses during the season came to teams that finished the year ranked higher than Denver – including top-10 teams No. 9 Alabama and No. 10 Utah.
In 2026, Denver made its 27
th consecutive appearance at NCAA Regionals and had at least one gymnast at NCAA Nationals for the 24
th time in the last 25 seasons in which the competition was held. Freshman
Shyla Bhatia extended that streak for Denver when she advanced as the individual event specialist on vault out of the Corvallis Regional. In Fort Worth, she hit her Yurchenko one-and-a-half for a 9.8125.
Bhatia helped lead a young Denver roster in 2026 that saw seven newcomers to the team – half of its overall roster – including six freshmen. DU also welcomed an entirely new assistant coaching staff this season with
John Carney,
Megan Haught and
Mary Rice joining the staff – the latter two making their collegiate coaching debuts.
The future for Denver Gymnastics is bright for 2027 when DU will seek to build on the experience gained during the 2026 season. Denver will again welcome a large freshman class with
seven first-year student-athletes set to join the roster, who together ranked as the No. 9 recruiting class in the country during the fall signing period.
