BATON ROUGE — LSU will enter the Northeast Regional Gymnastics Championships as the meet’s top seeded team it was announced Monday by the NCAA. The third-ranked Tigers will travel to Durham, New Hampshire, for the April 9 meet to be hosted by the University of New Hampshire.
The Tigers will be joined by seeded opponents Oklahoma and Arkansas, who are ranked 10th and 15th respectively, as well as New Hampshire, Rutgers and Pittsburgh.
The meet’s top-two finishers will advance to the NCAA Championships, April 21-23, in Auburn, Ala.
“We are glad to be going to a different place with some new opponents,” said LSU head coach D-D Breaux. “I think the different location will allow us to treat this like a new championship and a new year.”
The Tigers own winning records over each of the five of the opponents except for Rutgers, who LSU will be facing for the first time in program history.
The Tigers are undefeated against both Oklahoma (1-0) and New Hampshire (2-0) in postseason competition. LSU has yet to meet Arkansas in the postseason, but is a perfect 6-0 against them all-time. Pitt is the only team in this year’s field to hold a postseason advantage over the Tigers (1-0 all-time). However, the Panther’s lone victory came at the 1979 AIAW National Championships.
In addition to the six teams competing, five individual all-arounders and four event specialists will also be on hand.
Carrie Santore and Sarah Bulka of Brockport State, Emily Petkun of Pennsylvania, Anne McPherson of Yale and Emily Domenick of Rhode Island all earned all-around berths.
Individual event competitors will include Alexis Zafferes of Temple on the vault, Kathryn Fong of Yale on the bars, Leah Moon of Pennsylvania on the beam and Melissa Todd of Rhode Island on the floor.
In addition, the Tigers learned their competition rotation at the regional meet. LSU will begin on the bars and move to the beam before sitting out the third rotation with a bye. The Tigers then wrap up competition on the floor and vault and sit out the sixth and final rotation with a bye.
“I think that is better than many of the rotations we have drawn in the past,” said Breaux. “It will be good to get the two pressure events done and out of the way.”
Competition from UNH’s Whittemore Center Arena is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. (CT).