The LSU gymnastics team has not lost a regular season dual meet or a Southeastern Conference meet since a 197.525-196.800 loss to Georgia on Feb. 13, 2016 — the first season this year’s seniors were on the team. 
The Tigers have gotten off to an uncharacteristically slow start in 2019 and have yet to score a 197, something coach D-D Breaux sees as a benchmark for her team. 
For a team that rarely loses, sophomore all-arounder Sarah Edwards sophomore calls the first regular season loss of her college career humbling.
“This isn’t going to be a setback for us,” Edwards said. “[The Auburn loss] going to propel us to a better place. We’re not trying to peak right now. D-D always says this isn’t our time to peak. We’re on an upward journey.”
Edwards said that though the senior class have never dealt with a loss so early in the season, they have been the main source of encouragement both during the meet and following the loss to Auburn. 
During the meet, after each event, seniors like Sarah Finnegan and Lexie Priessman would encourage and motivate their teammates and get everybody on the same page.
“A lot of our seniors have sent uplifting and inspirational messages,” Edwards said. “Same with the coaches, they’ve been very uplifting in a positive way. You can’t win everything and sometimes things don’t go your way, but when you’re faced with adversity, it’s what you do after that.” 
Breaux said that although things haven’t gone exactly as planned in the first couple of weeks, little about LSU’s training or practices have changed. The Tigers are still working to be more consistent throughout, an issue that Breaux said carried over from last season. 
But LSU’s main problems are coming in execution, senior all-arounder Sarah Finnegan said. Little mistakes — sticking the landings, holding hand stands, stopping feet shuffles — add up. 
Something Breaux is changing, considering the issues LSU has faced, is that she and the coaching staff will take a more individualized approach to training. She said it’s a unique situation that she hasn’t had to face in recent years, but tailoring the coaching to each individual athlete will help in the long run. Being patient with the development of such an underclassmen-heavy team is going to be key for the Tigers as they rely on the more solid gymnasts. 
“We do intrasquads and we score ourselves,” Finnegan said. “We know where we’re at, where we can be and we know how to get there. It’s just a matter of putting it all together when it really matters.”
Finnegan said that the loss isn’t going to take them down. It isn’t something that LSU can’t bounce back from, but the team must focus on themselves individually and not worry about the competition on the opposite side of the floor if they want to hold up in the SEC. 
“Going into this week, we really want to focus on each other and improving those little mistakes that we have been giving away these last two meets,” Finnegan said. “We know that it’s a tough SEC competition, but we’re just going to focus on ourselves.” 
LSU’s schedule only gets tougher from here — the Tigers face No. 3 Florida on Jan. 18 — but the Tigers are confident in their ability to turn the ship around. 
“We have the same goals, the same intentions and the same mindset [as we had before the loss],” Edwards said. “We want a national championship. We’re not letting this get us distracted from our main focus.”

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Whitney Williston

LSU junior Lexie Priessman performs her bar routine during the NCAA Gymnastics Super Six on Saturday, April 21, 2018, in the Chaifetz Arena in Saint Louis, Missouri.