LSU gymnastics Head Coach Jay Clark confirmed that Alexis Jeffrey is enrolled at LSU and is a part of the active roster; though, she did not travel with the team to its meet against Georgia.
A freshman transfer from UCLA, where she was a scholarship athlete, Jeffrey will be eligible to compete immediately for LSU as a walk-on.
“There is not an issue within our team surrounding this or anything else right now,” Clark said in a press conference Jan. 25.
The transfer deal quickly became the subject of criticism on social media, as Jeffrey’s time with the Bruins came to an end as teammates have grown restless with a lack of communication from the school’s athletic department.
Margzetta Frazier and Sekai Wright, Jefferey’s former teammates from UCLA, appeared on actress Amanda Seales’ podcast “Small Doses with Amanda Seales” Jan. 26 to acknowledge rumors that have been spread about why Jeffrey left the team and their dissatisfaction with how it was addressed by UCLA’s leaders.
Seales prefaced the interview by stating that they would be addressing a “white gymnast” who has transferred to LSU, along with allegations of her saying racial slurs in song lyrics and being repeatedly told to stop.
“On my team, our truth is that more than one thing was said that was very inappropriate,” Frazier said. “Whether it was racially, whether it was ranking girls on their ugliness or body shape.”
“There’s rules when you steal, there’s rules when you fail a drug test, there’s gotta be rules when you’re racist or a bully, so what are they?” Frazier added regarding how UCLA handled the situation. “We want to take Lexi [Alexis Jeffrey] in and really educate her on what she did wrong.”
Frazier then later said that Jeffrey never apologized for anything, which to her made the situation worse.
The day before the podcast’s release, Coach Clark took questions at his press conference as the LSU team is coming off of a canceled meet against Arkansas due to COVID-19 protocols.
“I don’t know where a lot of it’s coming from, quite honestly,” Clark said about the circulation of online rumors about Jeffrey.
Clark explained to the media that this is the first time he has added an athlete from the transfer portal, and that he gathered the team to hear their feelings about adding a teammate midseason.
“Our team is healthy. Our team loves each other,” he said. “We’ve taken on the idea of having the conversations that need to be had when they’re had and talking to each other rather than about each other.”
Clark went on to discuss that he was not alone in making the decision of adding Jeffrey to the squad mid-January. Ashleigh Clare-Kearney Thigpen, associate athletic director for diversity, equity and inclusion, was called upon to answer some of the diversity and inclusion questions that arose from Jeffrey’s time with the UCLA program.
“At every step, we considered how our decision-making aligned with the values, objectives and commitments of our entire department,” a spokesperson for LSU Athletics said. ”We are all comfortable with our decision, confident in our processes, and committed to growing together.
“The process we went through was thorough, was thoughtful, was intentional,” Clark said. “Everybody will make their decision, but the information we have is not at all what is being floated out there.”
Jeffrey, a Warrensburg, Missouri native, is a freshman and former four-star recruit, according to College Gym News.
