BATON ROUGE- After competing against three of the top four teams in the nation and beating the No. 1 team in the nation each of the past two weeks, the sixth-ranked LSU gymnastics team travels to Denton, Texas for a four-way meet at Texas Woman’s University Saturday night.
Also in the field this weekend will be Oklahoma and Illinois-Chicago. LSU is a combined 7-2 all-time against this weekend’s opponents. Oklahoma is the only other ranked team in the field this weekend, holding the 20th spot in the most recent national rankings.
Coming off three such intense competitions, LSU (6-1) will now have an opportunity to rest some athletes and use some of its gymnasts in different events this weekend in preparation for the stretch run to the Southeastern Conference Championships in March.
“Our approach is to use this meet as preparation for the critical stages of our season that are rapidly approaching,” said LSU head coach D-D Breaux. “We’re going to get some people in the lineup some work over the next two weeks who haven’t competed as much this season in an effort to make us a little deeper and a more well-balanced team down the road.”
Breaux also indicated that she would begin taking steps toward competing more athletes in the all-around over the next two weeks with Abbey Burns and Stephanie Hyett at the top of the list. To this point, Shanyn MacEachern is the only Tiger to have competed all-around so far this season.
At the halfway point in their season, the Tigers came together, and not apart, as a result of their brutal three-week run against national powers Georgia, Utah and Alabama and have performed beyond Breaux’s expectations to this point.
“We’re further ahead emotionally than I thought we would be,” said Breaux. “We’re a confident team now and the past three weeks could have been very damaging emotionally, but we seemed to get a little stronger each week from it. Now we’ve got to keep it going and keep building momentum as we get closer to SECs and Regionals.”
Following the Tigers’ four-way meet in Denton, they return to Baton Rouge next weekend for a dual meet with Centenary at the Maravich Assembly Center on Friday before heading to Gainesville, Fla., the following week for an SEC showdown with Florida.