Auburn’s Suni Lee, the 2021 Olympic all-around gold medalist, performs on floor against LSU on Saturday, Feb. 5, 2022 at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
Auburn’s Suni Lee, the 2021 Olympic all-around gold medalist, performs on the balance beam against LSU, on Saturday, at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
Auburn’s Suni Lee, the 2021 Olympic all-around gold medalist, performs on floor against LSU on Saturday, Feb. 5, 2022 at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
Auburn’s Suni Lee, the 2021 Olympic all-around gold medalist, performs on the balance beam against LSU, on Saturday, at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
Sunisa Lee waltzed across the floor of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, smiled and waved to a thunderous ovation.
This was a road meet for her Auburn Tigers, but that didn’t matter. Lee isn’t some ordinary freshman gymnast: She’s an international superstar.
For Saturday afternoon’s meet between LSU and Auburn, Lee notched the first perfect 10 by an Auburn gymnast in 20 years, took home her second straight all-around crown and set the new program record for an all-around score, 39.825. She powered her Tigers to a school-high score, an impressive 197.750 — but it wasn’t high enough to defeat the LSU gymnasts, whose two perfect 10s put them over the top.
“I never ever consider anything I do perfect,” Lee said, “so it’s just like when I went out there, I felt like I just got better today. That was my mentality, not necessarily score a 10.”
It was like everything you remembered about a great gymnastics meet at LSU and at the same time like nothing there ever was before. A standing…
LSU versus Auburn was a show, a clash between two of the best eight teams in the nation. Lee’s name was on the marquee.
She is the first Olympic all-around gold medalist to compete at the collegiate level and the main draw for many of the 13,569 fans in attendance, the second-most ever to watch a meet at LSU. The sellout crowd, which forced some students to stand on the PMAC walkways, watched LSU sophomore Haleigh Bryant vault a perfect 10 on the meet’s first rotation.
Next up was Lee, debuting on bars. She stood on the mat, her left foot forward, right foot back and arms straight down her side. She drew in a deep breath and prepared to hop on the lower bar. A wild confluence of events led her to this moment, her second collegiate all-around competition.
Lee was a junior in high school in St. Paul, Minnesota, committed to Auburn, when the pandemic began. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the 2020 Summer Olympics back one year, after Lee finished her senior year.
Before the games began, in the U.S., the NCAA had finally relented and allowed athletes to sign endorsement deals and profit off their name, image and likeness (NIL). Then, gold-medal favorite Simone Biles withdrew from competition, opening the door for Lee.
After Lee won the gold medal, her follower count on Instagram ballooned from 200,000 to more than 1.5 million, and she saw similar increases on Twitter and TikTok. Lee no longer had to choose between working toward a college degree and capitalizing off that tall platform. She held firm to her previous commitment and enrolled at Auburn, a much larger presence than when she first committed.
“Obviously, it’s really cool to be competing against somebody who was in the Olympics,” star LSU junior Kiya Johnson said. “I think it’s super-awesome that those Olympic athletes can capitalize on NIL and come to college. It’s doing a lot for our sport and we’re getting a lot more exposure.”
Through her first four meets at Auburn, Lee steadily improved. She averaged a 9.888 on bars, a 9.908 on beam and a 9.900 on floor. On Jan. 28 against Alabama, her first collegiate all-around competition, Lee notched a 9.975 on beam, 9.925s on floor and bars and a 9.875 on vault — despite resuming vault only three days before — and won the competition with a 39.700.
On Saturday in Baton Rouge, Lee improved again. She grabbed the lower bar, turned in an elaborate performance, dismounted and stuck the landing, kicking off her day with a 10 to answer Bryant’s vault. The star LSU sophomore was impressed.
“I look up to (Lee) in so many ways,” Bryant said. “I’m a fangirl a little bit; I’m not going to lie. But she’s absolutely amazing.”
Lee went on to score a 9.900 on vault and a 9.950 on beam. After the third rotation, Auburn and LSU were tied at 148.200, setting up a showdown between Lee and Johnson, anchors on beam and floor, respectively.
Johnson performed a perfect routine, ending the day with a 10 on floor, and LSU put together a 49.775 on the event. Lee earned a 9.975, and Auburn’s collective beam score of 49.550 was not enough to prevail.
“That was one of my most nerve-racking beam routines I’ve had to do yet, because everybody was hesitant; I could tell,” Lee said, “and we were all very nervous.”
That’s likely because a historic crowd was on hand to watch a historic meet. Yes, the standing-room-only crowd cheered for the LSU Tigers, but they were also there to watch Lee.
“It feels really good to have their support, even if I’m competing for the other team,” Lee said. “It just shows a lot of great sportsmanship, and I really appreciated it.”
News Tips:
newstips@theadvocate.com
Other questions:
subscriberservices@theadvocate.com
Need help?
