Eight teams, two sessions, one championship title. In the No. 2 seed for SEC gymnastics, LSU was looking to continue its purple reign as the SEC Champions after taking home the crown last year.
“We had our heads down, and we just rolled through this competition no matter how loud the fans got,” all-around graduate student Haleigh Bryant said.
But before they could paint the town purple, they had to beat the leading team of Session One of the SEC Championships and its red wave, the Alabama Crimson Tide.
The Tide rolled in from Tuscaloosa – a mere hour away from Birmingham – and set the standard for the first session with a leading 197.100.
Alabama’s all-around freshman Ryan Fuller led the Tide with the highest score for its team during the third rotation on uneven bars with a 9.950.
LSU’s leading score was a 9.950 as well, however, the Bayou Bengals managed to achieve that score six times across the board with the final 9.950 of the night belonging to Bryant on the vault, who sealed LSU’s fate with a score consistent to LSU’s performance on the event throughout the season.
Passing Alabama by 1.100 with a final 198.200, LSU sat by as five perfect 10s were rallied up at the end of the night – three to Florida – one to Missouri and one to Oklahoma.
“The 10s were flying, we just kept our heads down and just went one person at a time, and we came out on top. It was absolutely amazing,” Bryant said.
In comparison to how LSU performed in this position last season, LSU was the No. 1 seed and had the advantage of competing in New Orleans, Louisiana, as it earned its fifth SEC Championship title.
The Tigers took home a ten last year from then-freshman Konnor McClain on the balance beam and secured the 2024 SEC Championship title.
While it was the only team that didn’t earn a perfect score during Session Two of the competition, it still managed to continue its reign as 2025 SEC Champions.
“We always say, ‘at the end of the day, control what we can control,’” Bryant said. “No matter what the judges do, we did our normal gymnastics and it was so fun to be out here.”
All of this comes back to what LSU’s head coach Jay Clark swears by: it’s not about the scores, it’s about the performance.
“We try our best not to even talk about scores,” Clark said. “It’s really just about focusing on the performance quality that we have.”
But it was more than just the win for LSU.
This victory was a sendoff for seniors like Bryant, Finnegan and all-around graduate student Aloynna Shchennikova into their final postseason competition in the NCAA Regionals, as well as one of the last victories Clark will celebrate with this set of athletes.
“I told them beforehand, ‘Don’t worry about hitting home runs. You’re the best team out there. Just make base hits,’” Clark said. “Then, when Florida took the lead at the end, I reminded them that base hits guys don’t go over there trying to be perfect. Just do your normal and that’s what they did. They stayed mentally where they needed to be.”
If you’re unfamiliar with how the regional qualification process works, you should know that just because a team might win its conference championship doesn’t guarantee them a spot in regional competition.
The top 36 teams in the nation are sent to compete in the regionals competition based on their NQS scores.
Since LSU is the No. 1 team in the country, they qualify to continue to NCAA Regionals and are automatically seeded given that they’re in the top 16 qualifying teams.
Being SEC Champions is just another accomplishment that the Tigers can add to their career victories, but this also means that they might see some of the teams they faced off tonight again in a few weeks.
A lot went right for newly named No. 1 LSU as it continues its purple reign across the SEC, and its victory is a definite confidence boost as it moves into the postseason.
“I didn’t see much of what anybody else did, but for us, it’s a big confidence booster,” Clark said. “Every team is being held together with duct tape and band aids, as I’ve said. And so to get an emotional boost. And a psychological boost is big.”
LSU will compete in the Pennsylvania regional against No. 16 Arkansas, Michigan and the winner of Maryland and West Virginia. The meet is at Penn State on April 3 at 6 p.m. CST.
