By ANDRE CHAMPAGNE, Tiger Rag Staff Reporter
The No. 2 LSU gymnastics team will host No. 8 Arkansas in its final regular-season home meet on Friday at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center (7:30 p.m., SEC Network+).
LSU will honor seven seniors before the meet: Courtney Blackson, Chase Brock, Ashley Cowan, Emily Innes, Alexis Jeffrey, Tori Tatum and Kathryn Weilbacher.
Time flies when you’re having fun 🥹💜 show out for our seniors this Friday at 7:30 p.m. CT in the PMAC! pic.twitter.com/p3qH3jcERF
— LSU Gymnastics (@LSUgym) March 11, 2026
The Tigers are coming off their best performance of the season, posting a season-high score of 198.325 on the road against No. 4 Florida (11-2, 5-2 Southeastern Conference) on Sunday.
“I feel good about it when you can go over there, compete hard, keep your cool like we did after initially having a mistake on bars and stay within two tenths of a team that’s at or near your ability level on the road in their arena,” head coach Jay Clark said Tuesday. “We’d love to have won it, but ultimately that doesn’t determine a whole lot, so the score helps us and we did a good job. It was by far the best meet we’ve had all year.”
LSU (10-3-1, 4-3 SEC) posted a 49.700 on vault in Gainesville – the second-highest vault score in program history. The Tigers received four scores of 9.925 or higher, including back-to-back-to-back 9.975s from sophomore Kaliya Lincoln, junior Amari Drayton and sophomore Kailin Chio.
In addition to its vault performance, LSU also turned in strong showings on beam and floor. Clark believes that when the team is performing at that level, it will be difficult to beat.
“It’s pretty awesome,” Clark said. “When all of them are dialed in with Chio, it’s a pretty heavy arsenal of great routines from everybody right now, and we’ve still been moving pieces around. It’s unusual to have that many great routines at your disposal.”
While LSU’s potential was clear entering the season, the team has continued to elevate its performances over the past few weeks despite competing in three meets over a 10-day stretch.
“I’ve just been really pleased and proud of the way they handled three meets,” Clark said. “It always feels like a good idea when you put it on the schedule, but when it comes down to it you worry about mental fatigue or the potential for injury. We came through it unscathed, and we were able to make some moves in that middle one. We also got Kaliya back out there on floor. I hope that means we’ve done the right things to be prepared now that the postseason is upon us.”
Because LSU competed Sunday, the team will only have two practice days this week. Clark said the focus will be on making sure the Tigers are ready to finish the regular season strong against a talented Arkansas (5-6-1, 2-4-1 SEC) squad.
“I’m more concerned about them being flat coming out of a big emotional, exhausting meet,” Clark said. “We’re just trying to monitor where they are right now and understand that we have to be effective when we train them. Expecting them to be at a fever pitch right now probably isn’t realistic, but we want to keep them as even-keeled as possible and prepare well for this week.”
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