During her senior year of high school, Sierra Ballard practiced uneven bars at her club, North Shore Gymnastics. When she looked up, she faced a wall of flags signed by those who once practiced in the same building as she did, day after day.
However, on this day, one flag caught Ballard’s attention. It was purple and gold.
“I want to go to LSU,” she tells her mom.
Ballard chose gymnastics over other sports, such as soccer and tennis. It taught her the importance of proper self-discipline and time management at a very young age.
“It was just like it was meant to be for me to be in gymnastics,” Ballard said. “The stars were aligned.”
The Ballards are a gymnastics family through and through. Ballard grew up a Georgia fan, attending gymnastics meets and camps every summer. Her uncle, Jay Clark, was the Bulldogs’ head coach and her aunt, Julie Ballard, was an assistant.
Her father, Steven Ballard, was an Assistant Coach of the Year under Clark in 1998, while her mother, Lori Strong-Ballard, was a Bulldog who won a national championship in 1993, the national bars title in 1994 and earned the SEC all-around title in 1996.
However, the purple and gold stole Ballard’s heart during her visits.
Clark took over as the Tigers’ head coach in 2020 when D-D Breaux retired after over four decades. He didn’t want to give his niece any special treatment and wanted to recruit Ballard strictly as a gymnast.
Breaux called Ballard a week before her final visits with LSU and Alabama.
“When you look in the mirror tonight, I want you to see a Tiger,” Breaux said.
When Breaux hung up the phone, Ballard called Alabama to let them know that she wouldn’t be making her visit. She had already found her home, or maybe her home had already found her.
“There’s just something about LSU,” Ballard said. “You can feel it in the air. It’s like a family atmosphere, like you feel welcomed by every single person on campus.”
That rang true when Ballard took her visit with the Tigers. There, she met LSU’s other recruits who would become her sisters. During the middle of her Tigers’ photoshoot, Ballard turned to Clark and said, “I want to come here.”
Ballard could smell something special brewing in Baton Rouge, but it took multiple sacrifices from her and her family to get her to that moment of committing to play at LSU.
She grew up in Mandeville, La., with just over 13,000 people. With so many clubs able to produce elite gymnasts nationwide, Ballard would need a boost to be seen and compete at the collegiate level.
That’s when her mother, a former gymnast who competed in the 1988 and 1992 Summer Olympics and four world championships for the Canadian national team, stepped in to coach her daughter a couple of years before she went to high school.
It was a tough transition on both sides. Ballard would yell for her mom across the gym, while Lori preferred to be called by her first name or “Coach.” The two constantly went over corrections in and outside the gym.
It was hard for Ballard to escape when she had a bad day. Meanwhile, Lori wanted to be the mother who braided her daughter’s hair and consoled and cheered her on at her gymnastics meets. She wanted her daughter back.
“Well, but she cares about the gymnastics,” Steven said then. “You know she can’t get there without you, right?”
Lori would have to sacrifice part of her relationship with her daughter to get Ballard where she wanted to be. The two stuck through, and Ballard landed on her feet at LSU.
When she takes center stage, Ballard steals the spotlight. She is a rockstar at heart: loud, assertive and in your face — all the time.
Ballard wasn’t always like that, though, especially growing up. Her parents described her as a giver. She was a reserved rule follower and a caretaker who set an example for her younger siblings, Sydney and Ethan. Ballard was the president of Mandeville High School’s French Club, a member of the Math Club and a gifted program member while loading up on all the AP classes she could experience.
“I used to play Pokemon Go,” Ballard said. “I was a weird kid. I had a Rubik’s Cube phase. I was really geeky.”
But when Ballard got to LSU, something clicked. She had fully bought into her leadoff spot on the floor and begun feeding her team energy as the fire starter and No. 1 cheerleader for Clark’s Tigers. Ballard has a reputation for walking into meets with sunglasses and a boom box as the life of the PMAC party.
Ballard has continued to scratch her extra-curricular itch while at LSU. She’s the president of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, a member of the LSU Fellowship of Christian Athletes and was named to the SEC Community Service Team for the third year in a row. Ballard will graduate this spring with a B.S. in finance, an MBA and an M.S. in sports management, looking to build a career in athletic administration.
It may seem overwhelming, but Ballard is quick enough to keep up. She’s always loved her academics and only wants to give back to the place that she calls home.
“She was always very passionate about things and driven and all that,” Lori said. “I think being off at school and finding her role within the LSU gymnastics team that allowed that boisterous confidence to blossom.”
A year ago, and off a national championship, Ballard was contemplating staying for her fifth and final year before she ended up recruiting herself.
“Why would I want to leave this place?” Ballard said.
A year later, LSU is back in the big one. The Ballard family will attend to watch her compete like they do every weekend — this time, for a second-consecutive national championship in Fort Worth, Texas.
When Ballard prepares to go on beam, Lori leaves her seat to watch her daughter from a side angle, away from everybody else in the arena.
“Use your arms,” she thinks while watching Ballard’s routine, giving her daughter the verbal cues she’s been training her with her entire life in her head. “Square hips.”
Steven does the same thing while sitting in his seat, sometimes needing to heckle a judge for a deduction on a previous LSU score.
Ballard has a routine before she performs. She takes a deep breath and prepares to go on beam, shaking LSU assistant coach Ashleigh Gnat’s hand. It used to be a hug that she would share with her club coach, transferring the stress from Ballard to her, but after a global pandemic, the iconic handshake just stuck.
“Longest routine of my life. Longest series of my life. Longest transfer from the back handspring to the layout. Longest leap pass of your life. Longest needle kick into the front toss. Longest set into the dismount,” Ballard recites word-for-word to Gnat as her thoughts slow down. “Taking your time and enjoying every single moment.”
The two share another breath and exchange “I love you” before Ballard hits the gas and takes off without looking back. It’s showtime.
