The No. 6 LSU gymnastics team will try to capture its second Southeastern Conference championship when it competes in Session II of the conference meet at 6 p.m. Saturday in North Little Rock, Ark.
The Tigers (10-4, 5-3 SEC) will compete as the fourth seed behind No. 1 Florida, No. 3 Alabama and No. 5 Georgia in the second session. The first session, which includes No. 12 Auburn, No. 16 Arkansas, No. 19 Kentucky and Missouri, will start at 2 p.m. The team that tallies the highest overall score will be crowned conference champion, regardless of which session it competes in.
“It’s no secret that the SEC is an extremely competitive conference, not just in gymnastics, but in every sport,” said LSU coach D-D Breaux. “…You don’t get a team ranked in the top 10 in anything unless your coaches are passionate and care a lot about their student-athletes. And then the student-athletes have to care a lot about what they’re doing.”
As the lowest seed in the top bracket, LSU will start the meet with the floor exercise and then continue with vault, uneven bars and balance beam in the usual home meet order. Breaux said she planned to practice going on floor first, and she asserted vault and floor are her team’s power events.
The Tigers are the No. 1 vaulting team and the No. 4 floor team in the nation with regional qualifying scores of 49.470 and 49.410, respectively.
“Floor is one of our best events, so it’ll be exciting starting on something that will propel us throughout the meet,” said junior all-arounder Sarie Morrison. “And after floor, we go to vault, so it’s kind of like starting in a home meet. This is actually a very good rotation for us.”
LSU has a 2-2 record against the teams in its session, with victories against Florida and Georgia and two losses to Alabama. The Tigers totaled their highest and lowest scores of the season in their losses to the two-time defending national champion Crimson Tide.
“We know it takes detail, and we’ve been focusing on that all year,” said sophomore all-arounder Rheagan Courville. “It’s really just time to put it together. We’ve competed against [the other three teams] all already, and we just have to put it all together at one given meet.”
After conference championships are completed, every team’s regional qualifying score will be recalculated.If LSU stays within the top six, it will be awarded the top seed in one of the six six-team regional meets, which take place at a predetermined sites.
Breaux said the conference championship isn’t about winning or losing, but about her team realizing its peak performance heading into regionals.
“Our focus has to be perfection and performance,” Breaux. “We have to remain very focused and have fun. … I think it’s the nature of this team that when the pressure is on, they tend to rise to the level of competition.”
