Costa Earns Qualifying Bid to NCAA Regionals

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – For the second time in her career, Brown senior Mei Li Costa has qualified for the NCAA Regionals on the uneven bars, the NCAA announced on its annual selection show on Tuesday afternoon. She will compete in the Auburn Regional.

Costa previously qualified for NCAA Regionals as a freshman in 2019 and was on target to qualify once again in 2020 before the pandemic shut down the season. COVID also forced the cancellation of Brown's 2021 season.

Costa qualifies individually for NCAAs with her national qualifying score (NQS) of 9.895. The Auburn Regional is one of four regional sites, all of which will host competitions from March 30- April 2. Costa will compete in the evening session at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, March 31. The winners of each event will advance to the national championships on April 14-16 in Fort Worth, Texas.

This marks the 22nd time a Brown gymnast has qualified for an NCAA Regional with Costa's 2019 qualification and Caroline Morant (all-around) in 2017 being the two most recent. Costa is also just the fourth two-time regional qualifier in program history, joining Morant (2014, 17), Jayne Finst (2002, 03, 04) and Eileen Rocchio (1992, 93).

At this season's Ivy Classic, Costa was co-champion on bars, defending her Ivy title from the 2020 meet. She earned First Team All-Ivy accolades by finishing first on bars and second on vault, giving her seven All-Ivy honors in her career. Her bars title was also her fourth league championship, previously having won on vault in 2019, and vault and bars in 2020.

Costa earned Second Team All-GEC honors on vault at this past weekend's GEC Championship after tying for fifth overall in the event. At the end of the regular season, she also earned First Team All-GEC honors on both vault and bars. On March 6, she scored 9.975 on bars in the Bears' dual against Bridgeport, setting a new school and Ivy League record, as well as receiving the program's first-ever perfect 10 from one of the judges. That performance was selected as the GEC Performance of the Year. She was also Brown's nominee for GEC Woman of the Year, was a GEC Scholar-Athlete, and earned the league's Performance of the Week award three-times this season.

As a team, Brown will find out on Wednesday its fate of qualifying for USAG Nationals, which will take place April 8-10 at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

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Costa Earns Qualifying Bid to NCAA Regionals

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Mei Li Costa

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