BATON ROUGE — The accolades continue to roll in for the LSU gymnastics team with the announcement of the NCAA Central Region awards. The Tiger staff swept the coaching honors, as D-D Breaux was named coach of the year and Bob Moore and Philip Ogletree were named the co-assistant coaches of the year. In addition, junior April Burkholder garnered gymnast of the year honors for the second straight season.
Breaux, already named the 2005 SEC Coach of the Year, has guided LSU to one of the most successful seasons in recent history. To date, Breaux has seen her Tigers win the NCAA Northeast Regional Championship, earn the program’s first ever No. 1 national ranking as well record its best finish at the SEC Championships (second) since the 1995 season, all en route to posting an impressive 24-4 overall record.
Helping Breaux have been assistants Moore and Ogletree who are primarily responsible for the vault and bars, events in which the Tigers are ranked No. 4 and No. 3 in the nation, respectively.
Moore has coached the Tigers to four of the top 10 vault scores in program history this season, while guiding Burkholder to All-SEC honors and Ashleigh Clare-Kearney, Nicki Butler and Burkholder to a share of the regional vault crown.
Ogletree, who was also named the region’s assistant coach of the year in 2004, has helped three of his six bar workers achieve top 15 national rankings this season. In addition, he led Burkholder to all-conference honors and Annie Gagnon to the NCAA Northeast Regional title.
Burkholder has been sensation for the Tigers during her junior campaign, earning a No. 4 national ranking in the all-around as well as top 25 listings on each of the four individual events. A first-team All-SEC selection, she has won a team-best seven all-around titles and an additional 21 individual event crowns. In addition, the SEC Gymnast of the Year has recorded perfect 10.00’s on three of the four events and has notched 28 scores of 9.900 or higher.
LSU wraps up the 2005 season in two weeks when it travels to Auburn, Ala., for the NCAA Championships, April 21-23.