With seven freshman, five sophomores and only three upperclassmen, the LSU gymnastics coaching staff needed someone to lead the team not just in the gym but also in the classroom. Junior gymnast Lindsay Beddow gladly took on that responsibility, and head coach D-D Breaux appointed her academic team captain.
“I like it,” Beddow said. “Because D-D can’t do it all herself.”
As academic team captain, Beddow checks weekly grade reports on each gymnast, helps her teammates schedule tutors, serves as an intermediary between the coaching staff and the girls for academic matters and encourages others to study as she sees fit.
“I think Lindsay makes a great academic team captain,” said former All-American teammate and current student coach Nicki Arnstad. “Obviously she’s leading by example, doing good in school. I think it’s a great example for her to step up. They need somebody to step up and show the freshman, and I think she has done a good job.”
Beddow said she carries a 3.8 GPA in psychology. Beddow’s teammates and coaches praise her academic discipline.
“She’s an outstanding student and very efficient with her time,” Breaux said. “I think they see her as an academic role model.”
Beddow’s roommate, junior Chelsea Richard, thinks her academics benefitted from her relationship with Beddow.
“She’s helped me do better in school,” Richard said. “We go study at CC’s at least three times a week together.”
Beddow does not only earn respect in the classroom, but she strives to do well in gymnastics. Her intelligence has been useful to her in the gym also.
“She’s a mental gymnast,” Breaux said. “She does a good job of analyzing what’s going on with her gymnastics. She knows the sport, and she knows the skill.”
Sophomore Lauren Companioni and freshman Terin Martinjak knew Beddow from their home gym in Tampa, Fla.
“We worked out in the same gym, so seeing her here was really motivating,” Martinjak said.
Beddow said she visited LSU when she was 11 years old and wanted to be a gymnast at LSU ever since.
“I kind of always wanted to come here, and it worked out that they offered me a scholarship,” she said.
During Beddow’s freshman year her work ethic concerned Breaux more than her knowledge of the sport.
“She was really immature because she thought she was a whole lot better than she was,” Breaux said. “Sometimes she wasn’t willing to do the work.”
Many of her problems freshman year were due to not working out the summer before she came to LSU.
“I really didn’t train over the summer and was out of shape,” she said.
Despite having some trouble her freshman year, the Florida native competed often, including two all-around performances and had what she deems as a successful season.
“I got yelled at by the coaches everyday, but I ended up having a really good freshman season,” Beddow said.
Her sophomore year she specialized in beam and uneven bars. She had to compete with six seniors for the chance to compete on the bar and often spent much of her time in competitions cheering on her teammates.
“Last year was really rough,” Beddow said. “I didn’t get to do bars that much last year because the seniors we had were incredible. I was the back-up girl, and it wasn’t that fun.”
Beddow is a consistent performer for the Tigers this season on the bars and beam, with the uneven bars being known as her specialty, but she said growing up she was not confident in her bar skills until she broke her foot. She spent a year only working on bars due to her injury.
“I used to be bad at the bars” she said. “After I was good at it, I started to like it.” She feels she has steadily progressed throughout her LSU career and now enjoys being one of the few upperclassmen on a young team with many new faces.
“I like being one of the older ones,” Beddow said. “Last year was great, but it’s been fun to have new people on the team.”