BATON ROUGE — The 14th-ranked LSU gymnastics team begins its SEC schedule Friday, when it travels to Lexington, Ky., to take on Kentucky and in-state foe Centenary in a tri-meet. The meet will be held at Memorial Coliseum and is slated to begin at 6:30 p.m. (CST).
“We goal is to be safe and solid this weekend,” said LSU head coach D-D Breaux. “We showed a lot of competitive character last weekend and we want to build on that and use this meet as a growing experience, so that we can be even better the following week.”
LSU is coming off a win at the season opening Bahama Breeze Invitational.
The Lady Tigers scored their highest season opening score in school history, 194.600, to top then 25th-ranked Maryland, Illinois and Towson.. The Lady Tigers also claimed top honors on the vault (49.000), bars (48.375) and beam (48.775), while nearly sweeping the individual honors as well.
Sophomore Jade Jenkins paced the young Tiger squad winning the all-around competition (39.175) and the vault, scoring a career-high 9.875 on the event. Junior Lindsay Beddow took home top honors on the bars, scoring a 9.825, while freshman April Burkholder won the first individual event title of her career finishing first on the beam (9.825).
Kentucky is 1-0 on the year after knocking off George Washington 193.625-191.500 in its season opener. The GymKats were led by All-American Aronda Primault and Julie Gore who finished first and second, respectively, in the all-around with scores of 39.100 and 39.050.
Centenary began the season 0-1 after falling to Southeast Missouri State 188.575-187.925 in its home opener.
After returning from Lexington, the Lady Tigers travel to 13th-ranked Auburn Jan. 24 to complete a three meet road swing before returning to Baton Rouge to open the home schedule Jan. 31 against No. 6 Denver.