FORT WORTH, Texas — “It was incredible,” exclaimed a triumphant Ashleigh Gnat, a junior all-arounder on LSU’s jubilant gymnastics squad.
“If you didn’t notice, my girls are awesome,” she said after the Tiger’s 197.4500 runner-up finish in the Super Six on Saturday.
The gymnast, having completed both bars and beam, rallied behind the Fort Worth Convention Center’s curtains in the fourth rotation to facilitate a make-believe “fashion show” to “loosen up” the Tigers and catapult them to a second-place showing.
After beam, LSU was trailing nearly all of the Super Six’s five other competitors. But within the meet’s next hour, the history books of LSU gymnastics were officially rewritten, thanks in part to freshman Julianna Cannamela.
Cannamela, who charted a fall in Friday’s opening semifinal on beam, started what LSU coach D-D Breaux called an “avalanche” for the Tigers this weekend.
“Julianna came up so big for us as a freshman on beam,” Breaux said of Cannamela’s career-high beam score of 9.8500 on Saturday. “It was a fabulous effort from a freshman who’s going to give us a lot of good gymnastics. She started off what was like an avalanche. It just came tumbling down at us. The kids were fabulous.”
Cannamela’s personal event-high score loosened up LSU enough to merit the fourth-rotation fashion show, which helped make light of a nearly-gloomy outcome yet to be set in stone.
“That’s the whole point,” Gnat said. “If something happens, you’ve got to pick it up. We continued to fight and push ourselves.”
LSU fought, and LSU conquered.
The Tigers cast a floor score of 49.4625 and a vault score of 49.5250 to rocket them to the competition’s lead, with only one floor performance from Oklahoma remaining.
“I had no idea until I finished my vault and ran back to the corral and realized how close it was,” Gnat said.
As an excited fist-pump nearly caused a fall, Breaux — the Tigers’ 39-season captain — watched with LSU after Gnat’s 9.9500 vault run to see if Oklahoma’s incoming score would be low enough to propel LSU to its first national championship in school history.
It wasn’t enough. Oklahoma won.
The Tigers trailed the Sooners by .2250 points to finish in second place, their best finish in program history.
But LSU still emerged victorious on Saturday night, said Gnat and sophomore all-arounder Myia Hambrick.
“It feels like a win,” Gnat said. “I don’t have one ounce of sadness, except that this year is ending with this team. Because this team is so amazing. Other than that, the fight, the drive, the intensity — there’s nothing better. I couldn’t have asked for more.”
“Overall, the meet was fantastic,” Hambrick said. “It was second place, but it was a win for us.”
Breaux agreed, calling Saturday her “proudest” moment as a coach, and she said LSU will benefit from the weekend’s showing far into the future.
“This team’s come-from-behind push to win, it was the biggest lesson this team could ever learn,” Breaux said. “We’re going to take this into many, many years to come. I’m very pleased. Very proud.”
You can reach Christian Boutwell on Twitter: @CBoutwell_TDR