Two weeks.
That’s the gap the No. 4 LSU gymnastics team has before it heads to Ames, Iowa, to compete as the top seed in the NCAA Ames Regional meet on April 4.
LSU (19-2, 7-0 Southeastern Conference) will use the upcoming bye week to recover from its SEC Championship disappointment and prepare itself for NCAA play.
“This is going to be great for us,” said senior all-arounder Rheagan Courville. “We are going to be able to rest our minds as well as our bodies. We are going to bring a nice, fresh, new enthusiasm to the competition.”
This week marks the Tigers’ first bye week this season, giving the team a chance to recover physically and mentally after a strenuous SEC Championship. LSU finished runner-up at the meet with a score of 197.450.
“Obviously not the results we wanted at SECs,” said sophomore all-arounder Ashleigh Gnat. “We learned a lot. It is nice to be able to move on. Now, we have this bye-week, so we can get in the extra training that we need. Just the touch-ups that we can work on during this bye-week, so we can use it going into the next meet.”
The “touch-ups” on certain events will be key for the Tigers to capture a high regional score, and later if they make the NCAA Semifinals and Super Six.
LSU plans to edit and improve its performance on beam, where the team struggled at the SECs for a score of 48.975. The Tigers were the top-ranked team in the nation on beam for a period of time this season. They don’t plan to make major changes but instead stick to what defined their regular season success on the event.
No. 2 seed Nebraska and No. 3 Denver are listed as the 15th and 16th on beam with LSU in fourth, according to GymInfo. How each team performs on beam in the regional meet could determine which two squads will advance to Forth Worth, Texas, for the NCAA semifinals.
The Tigers look at their beam score in the conference championship meet and realize the event was where the let the title slip away. But the team takes more good than bad away from the competition.
“We had a good performance on bars,” said LSU coach D-D Breaux. “We moved our feet a little bit on landings, which is something we are coaching and talking about all the time. We took that and went to beam and had momentum but didn’t take that momentum with us. That is the one thing we are going to take away from SECs going into regionals.”
Breaux said there were positives and negatives to take away from the conference championship, while maintaining a high level of enthusiasm and excitement. She said she doesn’t plan on altering the process leading up to Regionals even though the preparation is elongated.
“We are as good as anybody in the country,” Breaux said. “We need to stay with the focus, stay with the program. Stay with what got us to SECs. We are going with the same kind of training regiment, same program, same diet and the same meal. Everything the same.”
Meanwhile, Gnat carries an ambitious attitude toward this bye week to get the team ready for whatever the future may hold.
“This week is important,” Gnat said. “It is important for us to get stronger, get better and work on the little details.”
You can reach Christian Boutwell on Twitter @CBoutwell_TDR.