LSU Gymnastics Head Coach Jay Clark spoke to the media ahead of the NCAA Championship in Fort Worth, Texas.
No. 2 LSU Gymnastics has made it to the championship, marking this their fourth straight year that the Tigers have qualified under Clark.
Going into the NCAA Thursday, Clark wants everyone to be ready, including junior Konnor McClain. In the final round for the Baton Rouge Regional Tournament, McClain suffered an injury to her forearm, but Clark says they’re taking it one day at a time to see if she’ll be ready for Thursday.
“Konnor was great on Saturday and we’ll see where she’s at today,” Clark said. “It’s been day-to-day since the Regional meet. We’ve made some progress. We had one day last week where we had to shut it down a little bit, but we’re managing. It’s day-to-day.”
“I would stop short of guaranteeing anything at this point because around here, things change like the wind, but she was at a good spot Saturday.”
With mindset being the No. 1 thing in gymnastics, Clark wants the team to attack and relax. Although there’s been lots of talk about last year’s team, he doesn’t want to focus on that. He wants to keep the focus on this year’s team as he feels confident about competing.
“I think this is a completely different team, different year, different set of circumstances,” Clark said. “Last year’s team was fielding questions about repeat all year long. This year’s team is not. There’s so many things that go into that.”
“It’s a different group led by different individuals with a group of freshmen that have come in and contributed in great ways and transfers that have come in and brought into that their personality. I look at this team and think we’ve done a great job. We’ve put ourselves in a position that only one other team has done better than we’ve done all year.”
“We’re in a really good spot where it’s easier for us to be a little freeminded and just go attack this thing and just let it fly,” Clark said. “That’s my message to the team. Just get after it. There’s really nothing about this that we should feel some undue level of pressure. We’re confident and we’re just going to go compete and compete hard and just let it go.”
Besides keeping a straight mindset, joy also comes hand-in-hand with gymnastics and Clark tries to include that with the gym environment. continue with that. Without joy, Clark says, gymnasts will fall out of love with it and he doesn’t want that to happen under LSU.
“It’s a part of what we try to adhere to from day one in our culture year over year,” Clark said. “Finding joy in this sport is almost a requirement around here. It’s something that makes us feel better when we’re doing that.”
“My job is to create an environment for them to find that joy. The same joy they had when they were a little girl and they did their first giant swing or their first back handspring. I want them to finish their career feeling good about the experience that they had.
“That’s a priority of ours. I want to win them all, but I don’t want to do it at the expense of their experience that they had while they were here at LSU.”
LSU Gymnastics will compete for the first round of the NCAA Championship tournament Thursday, April 16 at 3:30 p.m. They will go up against No. 3 Florida, No. 6 Georgia and No. 7 Stanford. The top two teams will move on to compete for a National Championship.
