FORT WORTH, Texas — 
As the LSU gymnastics team braced for its final two events in the NCAA Championship on Saturday, freshman all-arounder McKenna Kelley reached for her make-shift microphone to emcee a final-hour fashion show, meant to rally the Tigers to Super Six stardom.
Behind the curtains of the Fort Worth Convention Center, junior all-arounder Ashleigh Gnat and others rolled out the mock runway in the fourth rotation.
“Sometimes, a couple of us do this thing where when the floor music is playing, we act like we’re modeling,” said sophomore all-arounder Myia Hambrick. “It gets our mind off the competition.
“This time, everyone did it.”
As the Tigers recently finished drawing a contending 49.3375 team score on the balance beam, they knew they were still in the mix to compete for a national championship.
“We weren’t sitting back there twiddling our thumbs,” Gnat said. “After beam, we knew we could still win. We knew we just had to have fun. That’s exactly what we did.”
Before they strutted down the fashion show’s catwalk, coach D-D Breaux and her gymnasts knew the Tigers trailed nearly all of the Super Six field, but a comeback was doable, if improbable.
LSU needed program-high, record-shattering scores — higher than 49.4000 — on both floor and vault to have a chance at claiming reign of the collegiate gymnastics world.
Thanks to the “models,” the Tigers did just that.
“The whole point is to let loose and have fun,” Gnat said. “Be ourselves. This was all a part of that. We’re going to go back there, let loose, have fun, then bring that
energy to floor.”
To gather the needed but seemingly impractical event scores, Breaux rallied the Tigers’ “beastmode” to make one final 2016
season appearance.
“It was kind of like, ‘OK guys, get this out of your head,’” Breaux said. “‘I would’ve been remiss as a coach if I didn’t come back here and tell you that you could win this thing.’ I said, ‘You’ve got to give us your best gymnastics. You’ve got to go out there and give us your best two events.’ I told them to unleash the beast, and they did.”
To their own surprise, The Tiger models mustered a 49.4625 on floor, followed by a 49.5250 on vault — a program-high in the
Super Six.
But to them, their “fun” turned their dreams into a second-place reality.
“It was a great memory kind of moment,” Hambrick said. “It was just fun. We were all back there, just hanging
out.”
You can reach Christian Boutwell on Twitter: @CBoutwell_TDR

Gallery • 1 Photos

Javier Fernández

LSU junior all-arounder Ashleigh Gnat stands during the introduction of the teams where the Tigers' 197.4500 score gave them the second place in the National Championship on Saturday, Apr. 16, 2016 in Dallas Fort Worth.