LSU picks up new crown and leaves one behind
The season ends with a thud.
The back-to-back SEC champion and reigning, for the next day and a half, national champion LSU gymnastics team brought their season to a close Thursday night. A 197.5250 was not enough to fend off Utah, who scored a 197.7625, and UCLA, who scored a 197.7375, though it was enough to outscore Michigan State’s 197.3625. LSU failed to make the national final for the first time since 2022 in their second worst meet of the 2025 season, and they will finish the season in 5th overall ahead of Michigan State, Florida and Alabama. The national championship today will see UCLA and Utah face Oklahoma and Missouri. The meet begins at 3:00 on ABC, and I hope you’ll still tune into watch the conclusion of an incredible season.
Kailin Chio wins 2025 NCAA Vault Title
As if she hadn’t done enough in her freshman season, the absolutely phenomenal Kailin Chio added her name to LSU’s roll of honor as the sixth LSU gymnast to win a vault championship and 12th to win an individual title overall. Kailin’s 9.9750 pushed her ahead of Grace McCallum to grab the title, LSU’s 19th overall and 18th in their NCAA history. It’s yet another bow on what was a great season.
What happened
Most people are wondering what happened to this team and why did they do this. I was doing so angrily after the meet and called it a choke. This, however, was not a choke. A choke is what Oklahoma did last year. They completely fell apart and looked like a different team. LSU did not look a whole lot different than how LSU’s looked at points in the season, and that’s why this is a textbook bottling.
LSU could not hit landings to save their lives. Of the 18 landings they could stick on vault, bars and beam, LSU stuck about five. That’s not good enough ever. Worse than that was the stuff before the landings. Handstands on bars weren’t there, and leaps on beam were inconsistent. The only way I can describe it is that they looked defensive in a spot where they needed to be aggressive. If they made aggressive mistakes, they would’ve gone over 90 degrees on handstands instead of going under and they would’ve gone too hard on leap series on beam leading to balance checks. That’s fine because when they do that, they correct it. Floor was fine, by the way. The last three routines put LSU in this meet before vault put them back out of it.
LSU’s season shouldn’t have ended that night if they did what they were capable of. Heck, they would’ve come second in the first semifinal by just .0250. They needed to do more and they just didn’t. This feels like the 2005 team in the sense that it was historically great and should’ve made the final, but it didn’t. For context, LSU’s 2005 team was the first to ever earn the #1 overall ranking and tied the national high with a 197.850 (in 2004, the season high was 198.875), but they didn’t make what would’ve been the program’s first Super Six. I’ll talk more about it once the 2025 season’s come to an end, but to put it simply, this night will not define this season. Before the 2026 season, LSU’s going to have to update three banners. That’s awesome. This meet was a reminder that for all the crazy things those women do, they’ve still got a little bit of human left in them.