BATON ROUGE — The eighth-ranked LSU gymnastics team begins its 2006 road schedule Sunday when it travels to Denton, Texas, for a quad-meet with Texas Woman’s, Utah State and Centenary. Action begins at 2 p.m. from TWU’s Kitty Magee Arena.
After opening the season last week at the Super Six Challenge head coach D-D Breaux is looking forward to a slightly less intense competition that will allow for more experimentation in the lineup.
“This meet at TWU will be an opportunity for us to insert some freshmen into our lineup and give them some early season experience,” said Breaux. “I think it is important that at this time in the season we take every chance given to us to prepare everyone for competition.”
The Tigers had just three freshmen perform a combined four routines at the Super Six Challenge last week. That number is likely to rise significantly at TWU.
Freshmen Amanda Morales, Lauren Klein and Christina Suhr all saw action in the season opener, but Breaux would like to see fellow freshmen Vanessa Rodriguez and Teri Gibson also get a taste of collegiate competition Sunday. Rodriguez could see action on the beam or bars, while Gibson could be inserted on either the floor, beam or vault.
LSU will fill the remainder of the lineup with its veteran performers that have anchored the squad for the last two seasons. All-Americans Terin Martinjak and Lisa Rennie and juniors Kelly Phelan and Nicki Butler will headline that group.
Following the TWU quad meet, the Tigers return home to the Pete Maravich Assembly Center for a dual meet with Iowa on Jan. 20 at 7 p.m.