ESPN
The Stanford Cardinal claimed the 2026 NCAA Men’s Gymnastics team championship, continuing its remarkable dynasty and winning its sixth national title in seven years. But that wasn’t the biggest headline coming out of the event.
Instead, that went to Oklahoma’s Tyler Flores and Stanford’s Jun Iwai, who tied for the individual championship in the vault.
Both Iwai and Flores put in incredible vaults, landing them with matching scores of 14.443.
There’s just one problem with that, however. The NCAA only had one trophy to give to the winner of the event. So it had to be settled by the time the two competitors left the arena.
Now, you may be thinking to yourself, “Why don’t they just each do another vault?”
That’s a good question! But apparently that’s not an option. Instead, the NCAA opted for a much simpler, but perhaps less fair way of determining who got to take home the trophy.
Tyler Flores Wins NCAA Vault Championship Trophy In Rock, Paper, Scissors Battle
Apparently, there are no official NCAA rules for how to split a tie in this situation. So technically, both Flores and Iwai are named 2026 NCAA Champions in vault.
That’s the good news!
The bad news is that only one of them gets to keep the trophy for the time being. And to figure out who that person was, the NCAA turned to a tried-and-true method: Rock, Paper, Scissors.
An NCAA official stepped in and told the two to compete in the classic game to determine to kept the trophy. On the first attempt, they remained at an impasse after each contestant chose rock.
For those wondering, the NCAA has an intricate official procedure for who gets to take home the trophy if there’s a tie at the top. 😜 pic.twitter.com/wPZptkVE3M
— Mark Williams (@wellsgymn) April 21, 2026
On the second attempt, Flores was unwielding, remaining with rock. Unfortunately for Iwai, he changed his selection to scissors, meaning he had to hand over the trophy to Flores and went home empty-handed.
For those of you hoping for a happy ending, Iwai will eventually get a trophy, but he’ll have to wait for it to come in the mail.
In the meantime, Flores gets to call himself a national champion in both the vault and rock, paper, scissors, which is a pretty unique claim to fame.