The second round of the NCAA gymnastics championship is on Thursday, March 31 in Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh. The Pack gymnastics squad welcomes No. 6 LSU, No. 11 Missouri and Iowa to determine who will compete in the regional final on Saturday, April 2.
The Pack posted a final score of 195.625 and finished fourth overall in the EAGL Championships this year. Junior Emily Shepard became the first individual champion from NC State since 2019 and the first Pack gymnast to earn two individual titles at the EAGL Championships since 2014.
Shepard came first on beam and in the all-around. Freshman Lauren Rutherford, junior Alexis Ortega, senior Meredith Robinson and graduate student Nicole Webb all earned EAGL All-Tournament honors along with Shepard.
No. 6 Louisiana State University
LSU bounced around the top 10s in the NCAA rankings this season, finishing the regular season as one of the top teams in the SEC and earning the No. 2 seed in the SEC Championship.
The Tigers finished fifth overall, which was unexpected considering how well this squad was competing up until this point. The team put up an impressive 49.550 on beam, which was the highest score at an SEC meet in the school’s history, in addition to two gymnasts matching their career highs in the same event.
No. 11 Missouri
Missouri is coming off a fourth place finish with a program-high conference championship score at the SEC Championship. A relatively young team, Missouri’s top performers at the championship were two freshmen and one sophomore.
Missouri consistently scored in the 196 to 197 range all season, with their season average all-around score being 197.031. Junior Sienna Schrieber competed in all meets this season as an all-around gymnast, consistently scoring around 39.433.
Iowa
Iowa placed third overall in the Big Ten Championship and had one title for the team in the floor event by senior Lauren Guerin. The squad had their season-high finish in the championship, with an all-around score of 196.950. Iowa consistently scored between 196.200 and 196.800 this season, which puts them a little higher than the Pack’s scores this season.
Should NC State perform to get at least second amongst these teams, the Pack and one other team will go on to compete against the top two teams in the second group of the regional out of the following teams: Michigan, UCLA, Maryland, UNC-Chapel Hill and Towson.
UNC and Towson will compete to determine the fourth team in that second group on March 30. The two groups will then compete individually on March 31, with the top two teams of each group competing against each other on April 2.
