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Kailin Chio

Kailin Chio tabs SEC Freshman of the Year

Mar 26, 2025 | 2:51 PM
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Kailin Chio was named the 2025 SEC Freshman of the Year, announced by the Southeastern Conference in its annual gymnastics awards for the season.
A native of Henderson, Nevada, Chio has not only been the top freshman performer in the SEC throughout the 2025 season, but in the country, and she’s just getting started in her postseason debut with the Tigers.
The five yearly awards given out by the conference are SEC Freshman of the Year, Specialist of the Year, Newcomer of the Year, Gymnast of the Year and Head Coach of the Year, which are determined by a vote of the head coaches in the conference.
On top of her freshman of the year recognition, Chio was also named to the All-SEC and All-Freshman Team. She is only the fourth gymnast in LSU history to win the SEC Freshman of the Year award, joining Haleigh Bryant (2021), Kiya Johnson (2020) and April Burkholder (2003), and the 20th gymnast to earn a spot on the SEC All-Freshman Team since it began in 2009.
LSU saw a total of four gymnasts make the All-SEC team in 2025 for a combined nine honors this year, moving their total to 116 All-SEC selections in program history. The other Tigers to claim a spot on this year’s All-SEC list are seniors Haleigh Bryant and Aleah Finnegan and sophomore Konnor McClain.
The All-SEC Team is composed of the student-athletes with the top eight scores (including ties) on each event and in the All-Around competition through the regular season based on National Qualifying Score (NQS). The All-Freshman Team is comprised of the freshmen student-athletes with the top four scores (including ties) on each event and in the All-Around competition through the regular season based on NQS.
Bryant and Finnegan add another All-SEC recognition to their decorated careers after recently being crowned individual SEC Champions. This year marks Bryant’s fifth straight year being named to the All-SEC team and the second time for Finnegan.
A native of Cornelius, North Carolina, Bryant was named the 2025 SEC All-Around Champion for the second straight year and shared the beam title with teammate Finnegan, the first SEC individual title of her career. Bryant now owns five SEC titles and seven All-SEC honors as she claimed two honors on vault and floor this year. Finnegan, a native of Lee’s Summit, Missouri, took home All-SEC honors on vault, beam and the all-around this year, moving her career total to four.
McClain, the sophomore out of Las Vegas, Nevada, marked her second consecutive year on the All-SEC list, this time on bars with her NQS of 9.925 on the event at the end of the regular season.
Chio has had the most historic freshman debut in LSU history. In her first year, she has competed in the all-around in every meet for the Tigers, recording season highs of 10.0 on vault, 9.950’s on bars and beam, 9.975 on floor and 39.800 in the all-around, the highest all-around score by a freshman in LSU history and in the country currently. She has placed as one of the top five gymnasts in the country for five straight weeks in only her first year, putting up veteran numbers all year long.
She owns an NQS of 39.670 in the all-around heading into postseason and has ranked amongst the top 10 gymnasts in the nation for eight out of 12 weeks of competition so far in 2025, including claiming the No. 1 spot on vault for two weeks in week seven and week 11.
The freshman currently ranks in the top 20 on every event nationally with an NQS of 9.9+ across the board. She has had nine meets this year where she has put up scores of 9.900 or better on at least three events for the Tigers and owns 20 titles, with six of those coming on vault, five in the all-around, four on bars, three on beam and two on floor.
Chio has marked many “firsts” in her first year at LSU, including being the first freshman to record a 10 this season after her perfect yurchenko one and a half on vault against Auburn on March 22. It was only the fourth perfect score in the country by any gymnast so far this year.
She also made SEC history when she set the record for the most SEC Freshman of the Week honors in a single season, taking home nine out of 11 awards in 2025, the most by any freshman in SEC history. She broke the previous SEC record of eight set by Florida’s Kayla DiCello’s in 2023 and Haleigh Bryant’s previous LSU record of five.
In her postseason debut, Chio finished amongst the top 10 performers in the 2025 SEC Gymnastics Championships on vault, bars, floor and the all-around. She finished second on floor with her score of 9.950 and fourth in the all-around with her 39.650 at the championships.
The LSU Gymnastics team will enter the NCAA postseason as the No. 1 seed for the first time in program history as they earned their 40th straight regional berth on Monday. The Tigers will begin their journey to the NCAA Gymnastics Championships at the Penn State Regional beginning on Thursday, April 3.
No. 1 LSU improved their NQS to 198.115 after winning the 2025 SEC Championships in Birmingham last Saturday to become the No. 1 team in the country. In the final rankings before the NCAA postseason begins, the Tigers ended Oklahoma’s reign at the top of the national leaderboard, the first team to do so since 2022.
**LSU Press Release**
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