Size matters.
The phrase may generate some laughs, but the idiom holds true for the LSU gymnastics team.
This year’s squad has four girls that stand at 5 feet 5 inches or taller — junior Ashley Lee (5-foot-5) and freshmen Mckenzie Fox (5-foot-7), Lainie Fleming (5-foot-7) and Sarie Morrison (5-foot-9).
It is the first time LSU has had a gymnast above 5 feet 5 inches since Adrienne Couret, in 2002, who was 5 feet 6 inches.
Many gymnasts stand at or just above 5-feet tall — eight of LSU’s gymnasts are 5 feet 2 inches or shorter. Many gymnastics apparatuses appear tailored for shorter competitors.
Though taller gymnasts would appear to be hindered, height hasn’t fazed LSU’s lanky crew.
“I’ve always been used to being taller,” Lee said. “You have to adjust, but it doesn’t really make a difference being tall. It doesn’t bother me.”
So far, the adjustment has been smooth.
Lee garnered First-Team All-America honors on the vault in 2010 while taking home two vault titles. Her career high on the vault is 9.90.
She has competed on the vault and on the floor exercise in every meet this season.
Morrison — the tallest gymnast in the country — has burst onto the college stage as the only Tiger to compete in the all-around competition in all four meets. At last weekend’s Metroplex Challenge, Morrison recorded a career high in the all-around, scoring a 39.400 and tallied 9.800 or higher in every event.
When LSU coach D-D Breaux recruited Morrison in high school, she didn’t know Morrison would become the tallest gymnast in LSU history.
“When we first started recruiting her she was about 4 inches shorter,” Breaux said. “Then there was a nice little growth spurt she enjoyed during her junior and senior [years].”
Equipment issues may occur on the uneven bars and on the floor.
The uneven bars consist of a low bar 5 feet 3 inches above the ground and a high bar just under 8 feet high.
The challenge for girls like Morrison, Fleming and Fox, who compete on uneven bars, comes when they attempt to swing between the two bars. The distance between the two bars varies with a maximum of 5 feet 10 inches, leaving little space for Morrison.
“It’s hard, but I’ve been tall my whole life,” Morrison said. “When I’ve gone through growth spurts I’ve had to redo everything and get my timing down.”
Floor exercise tests the athletes’ ability to keep their strides a certain length.
The floor mat is 39 feet by 39 feet. Exercise physiologist Jack Daniels of O2 Endurance said the average stride while running full speed is 1.14 times the person’s height.
For a gymnast with an average height of 5-foot-7, each stride would be 6 feet 4 inches long. That would allow her just six steps diagonally across the floor to reach full speed, do a tumbleset and land inbounds.
A 5-foot-2-inch gymnast would have more than an extra half step to complete her routine and stay between the lines.
“They get a lot of height and dynamic because they’re
coming out of the air from very high distances,” Breaux said. “When you have that high distance you’re going to have a high arc … so sometimes you have boundary issues.”
Though a rare breed, there have been successful tall gymnasts throughout history.
Russian great Svetlana Khorkina was considered too tall to compete on the international level at 5 feet 5 inches.
Khorkina responded to her critics by winning seven Olympic medals, including gold on the uneven bars in both the 1996 and 2000 summer games.
The Tigers hope their tall gymnasts will continue to use their length to prove that bigger is, in fact, better.
“[Height] adds to the aesthetics tremendously,” Breaux said. “Their lines are long and beautiful.”
 
—-
Contact Rob Landry at [email protected]