BATON ROUGE, La. – Senior Alyona Shchennikova scored 9.850 on vault in last week’s win over West Virginia to close out the regular season. But she’s one of five athletes who’ve battled through injuries this year. 

Shchennikova said that this year has just been a little bit mentally challenging for me with my class going down one by one. So, it’s been a rough time trying to, like, keep myself checked in the entire time. So, I think my mental toughness has been tested a lot this year. 

LSU Gymnastics head coach Jay Clark said, I don’t think I’ve ever been through a season where we’ve had this level of a rash of injuries that have come along. They’ve been through a lot and people have counted them out, and they’re just they’re very tenacious about not being counted out. 

One athlete to never count out is all-around gymnast Haley Bryant who made history last week by scoring three perfect ten’s for the first time in program history. 

According to LSU all-around gymnast Haley Bryant, I think just to take it one thing at a time, don’t get ahead of ourselves. Don’t put any more effort and don’t put any less effort in because our normal gymnastics is going to be enough. So, just taking it one event at a time, one person at a time, what’s going to be best for us? 

Clark said, We’ve got to keep approaching things the exact same way that we have and not really try to make any kind of categorical changes or shifts in the way we think. We’re not favored to win this thing. That’s just a given, but that doesn’t mean we can’t win it.