BATON ROUGE — LSU gymnasts Haleigh Bryant and Aleah Finnegan were named 2023 Women’s College Gymnastics Association (WCGA) Regular Season All-Americans by the association Thursday morning.
All-America honors are awarded to gymnasts who finish in the top-16 of the final NQS event rankings. Those who placed in the top eight individually earned first team awards, while those in LSU have now collectively earned 293 awards in program history.
A native of Cornelius, North Carolina, Bryant finished the regular season as the No. 4 gymnast in the nation and placed among the top performers on vault, beam and floor. The junior competed in the all-around in every regular-season competition for the Tigers, recording five encounters in all four events with scores over 9,900.
Her career-high all-around score came in the squad’s regular-season finals against West Virginia, where she made history and had three perfects, earning the highest all-around score in school history with her 39.875 finish that night.
Bryant’s front handspring front pike is considered one of the best vaults in all of NCAA gymnastics, as her NQS of 9,980 landed her at the top of the event.
She has scored 9,900 or more on vault at every meeting this season and recorded three 10s against Missouri, Alabama and West Virginia in 2023. She has eight perfect finishes at the event in her career.
Bryant also ranked 6th in the nation on floor and 14th on parallel bars and owns an NQS of 9.955 on floor and 9.935 in events. She had eight combined encounters with scores over 9,900+ and recorded her first career 10s in the same night’s events against West Virginia to take her career total to 10 and put her at the top of the most perfect career scores in program history bring to.
The honors mark Bryant’s third career All-America honors on vault and second on beam, floor and all-around.
Finnegan earned her first career honors on the floor, beam and all-around for her performance during the regular season. The sophomore from Lee’s Summit, Missouri, placed 4th on floor, 6th on beam and 12th in the all-around.
The sophomore owns an NQS of 9,965 on the floor and nine encounters with over 9,900 appearances at the event. She got her first career perfect on the floor that season against Georgia and got another in Alabama.
On beam, Finnegan had nine hits of 9,900 or better and recorded her first perfect in the event against Florida.
Bryant, Finnegan and the Tigers are preparing to begin NCAA postseason competition at the Denver Regional on Friday, March 31. LSU will take on No. 11 contenders Oregon State, Georgia and Nebraska in the first session of the second round at 3 p.m. CT on ESPN+. The roster will compete for their place at the NCAA Championships April 13-15 in Fort Worth, Texas.
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