Alyssa Leal Season 2025
Alyssa Leal was hired as the Assistant Communications Director for gymnastics and soccer in August 2022. She has worked for the LSU Athletic Communications department for over seven years, beginning as a student within the department in 2019 and then earning a graduate assistantship from 2021-22 before becoming full-time.
Within her role, Leal serves as the primary media relations contact for gymnastics and soccer and leads all social media and branding efforts for both programs. She is the primary liaison between coaching staffs and various departments such as creative, marketing and NIL to ensure execution of team campaigns and initiatives and handles all media relations duties including writing press releases, maintaining team statistics, and coordinating access with national and local media outlets.
Leal also oversees the communications students and assists in directing student operations and assignments, facilitating meetings and organizing student schedules.
On top of that, Leal leads the planning, creation, and distribution of content across all official LSU Gymnastics and Soccer social media platforms, including Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and LSU Plus, the home of long-form content for LSU Athletics.
Leal’s social media strategy first put LSU Gymnastics on everyone’s timeline in 2023, following the program’s run to the national championship, where they finished fourth. Since then, she has led LSU to become the No. 1 social media account across NCAA Gymnastics and as well as being the most engaging, active and talked about brand.
She also covered the Tigers when they won their first-ever national title in 2024.
Ahead of the 2026 season, she has combined for over 15.1M engagements and 14.5M likes in 12.1K brand posts across all gymnastics accounts the past three seasons. The LSU Gymnastics accounts have gained a total of 452.7K account followers across all platforms as well.
Leal also assists in the production of “The Climb,” a Sun Coast Emmy Award winning docuseries that follows the LSU Gymnastics team and offers exclusive behind-the-scenes access throughout the season.
On her work with LSU Soccer, Leal has led the soccer accounts to a growth of over 60K followers in three years, totaling over 1M engagements and likes.
Prior to becoming full-time, Leal managed social media accounts for various teams, assisted with all media relations, and oversaw the communications student staff as a graduate assistant.
For three seasons (2019-2022), Leal served as the secondary contact for the Women’s Basketball team and managed all social media accounts for the team. Her duties include social media strategy, content creation, and assist with all media relations. In her time working with the team, she has managed the accounts for two SEC Tournament appearances and one regional appearance. Leal played a key role in all media relation and social media efforts for the 2022 regional hosted in Baton Rouge.
Leal also worked closely with the softball, football, and gymnastics teams during her time as a student.
She helped lead social media efforts for softball during their Regional and Super Regional appearances in 2021. In 2022, Leal was the acting SID for the gymnastics teams regional appearance in Raleigh.
Leal worked on football for four years during her time as a student in the Athletics Communications office, where she helped manage social media accounts, press conferences, interviews, and game day press box operations.
The New Orleans native graduated from LSU with her bachelor’s degree in public relations with a minor in business in May 2021.