Senior Night sees it all for LSU Gymnastics – season highs, Nation highs, a perfect 10. And controversy. “To TEN or NOT TO TEN!” – as commentator Cathy Johnson Clarke put it at the beginning of the 2025 season has struck again. This time, people are questioning whether it was right to not give Georgia’s Ja’Free Scott a perfect 10 for her ‘moonwalk’ beam routine. Some fans even voiced their opinion that LSU’s Konnor McClain deserved a perfect 10 herself.
The issue with the Collegiate Judging Issue (CJI) has been a headache for a while now. Not a weekend goes by when there’s no controversy and public outcry about overscoring and underscoring. Players, coaches, experts – everyone has voiced their opinion, and by opinion, we mean how the introduction has made things worse instead of making it better. Now, after the Senior Night, LSU head coach (HC) Jay Clark himself has something to say about the whole issue.
Jay Clark thinks the judging ‘issue’ was bound to happen
After the March 8 meet, Clark, while attending the press conference, ended up venturing into the judging controversy himself by saying, “We did something this year that kind of broke scoring.” He was talking about the introduction of the rule that would evaluate the judges themselves so that event scorings become more consistent, more accurate, and reflect the real performance. There was also an emphasis on bringing down the number of perfect 10 scores awarded.
But what ended up happening was a botch-up in implementation. According to the LSU HC, the change was not well-thought-out: “It was ill-advised and it caused a lack of consistency nationwide, not in the SEC specifically but all across the country.” Continuing, he also spoke about how the new system has polarized the decision of the judges: “We saw a pendulum swing all the time even within panels.”
The former Georgia HC, however, saw it coming. In the press, he said, “You heard me talk about it before it started that that was it was fairly predictable that that would happen.” It was a well-meaning plan no doubt. But the implementation needed an integration of ideas. Every judge had to think on the same line for it to be successful. Take for example LSU’s meet with Georgia. People thought Konnor McClain should have gotten her perfect 10 on the night for her flawless bars routine. One judge did award her 10. But the other one – 9.95.
As Clark continued he explained how just putting it out there that the perfect 10s has to come back was wrong way to go about it, “We injected something that probably should have been done differently … some judges felt paralyzed to give scores and others didn’t.” The same thing probably happened for Georgia Bulldogs’ Ja’Free Scott. She got 9.95 and 9.90 from the judges for her beam routine.
But in all this controversy, Jay Clark wants to make one thing clear – LSU gave a Championship level performance and they deserved the score.
LSU Gymnastics HC asks to focus on the performance and not scores
Problems are there with the system. But when a team performs so well, they deserve the score. That’s what Jay Clark has to say about his team: “I’m not going to apologize for a score that we got … it was worthy of a 198, I don’t care whose gym you’re in.” We can’t disagree with Clark on the performance part. It was as if the whole LSU gymnastics team was a hive mind with everyone performing at such a high level. And the result? A nation high of 198.575. It’s even the highest in the program’s history.
Jay continued, “I mean you know everybody can debate those things but the quality of the performance from our team was a championship quality performance and that’s what’s important to all of us.” Even on a night when everyone was complaining about robbed perfect 10s, one LSU managed to earn it for herself – Aleah Finnegan. That’s how good they were. No doubt LSU took home all the event titles, with 49.675 on the Floors – that’s just plain impressive!
The HC even doubled down to dispense any doubts about how good they were: “It’s not revolutionary for scores to go high on people’s senior nights just so if you anybody’s been paying attention over the years, it can happen.” Although Jay Clark seems to be defensive about it, there is no doubt LSU looked every bit the defending champs and maybe the ones to take it home again this season. What are your thoughts?
The post ‘Judges Felt Paralyzed’: LSU Gymnastics Coach Jay Clark Sets the Record Straight on Team’s Controversial Perfect 10 on Senior Night appeared first on EssentiallySports.
