By HARRISON VALENTINE
Written for the LSWA
Before there was Haleigh Bryant, Sarah Finnegan or Ashleigh Gnat, there was a 14-time All-American at LSU. An NCAA beam champion, and an SEC Gymnast of the Year, who was setting the foundation and helping vault LSU gymnastics into a perennial power.
That was April Burkholder, a native of Houston, but an LSU Tiger through and through. Just ask her legendary coach D-D Breaux, who experienced it all in her 43 years as leader of the LSU program.
Breaux coached 250 All-Americans and 89 All-SEC selections during her illustrious tenure that in 2017 landed her in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. Burkholder was as driven as any of them, she said, high praise coming from one of the sport’s greatest pioneers.
“She was intense,” Breaux said. “She had that Eye of the Tiger. Nothing was going to stop her. Nothing was going to stand in her way. She wanted to win championships. She wanted to do anything she could possibly do to put an exclamation point on her gymnastics.”
Now Burkholder will join her coach in the state’s sports shrine during the 2025 Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Induction Celebration June 26-28 in Natchitoches. Check LaSportsHall.com for event information.
Not only did Burkholder’s greatness pay dividends for LSU on the mat, but it also translated into fan interest never previously seen in an LSU program that once competed in the Carl Maddox Field House or before sparse crowds in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
In 2025, the Tigers finished with four consecutive sellouts for the first time in school history. A total of 13,476 people attended the final meet against Georgia. Those numbers, historic in nature, were sparked by gymnasts like Burkholder and coaches like Breaux, who generated excitement that Tiger fans feel today.
“She was the beginning of us being able to market and promote and really put people in the seats,” Breaux said. “The fact that, when she left, we were selling season tickets and putting 6,000 people in the stands, that was the beginning of what we see now.”
When you boast a resume like Burkholder’s – whose list of accolades spill off the page – it’s almost impossible to pick one moment that stands out. For Breaux, it was the final event of her senior year, capturing the 2006 NCAA championship on balance beam. All that hard work culminating in the ultimate prize on the ultimate stage. How fitting.
“Everything she did was just awesome,” Breaux said. “She never won a national championship until her senior year. Numerous All-American honors and numerous SEC honors. But that coveted national title had evaded her. In my career, I’ve had three or four beam national championships, and every one are special people because the event requires so much focus and repetition of training.”
Burkholder got an early start in the sport, inspired by her big sister and encouraged by her parents.
“My sister was four years older than me and had been in gymnastics a year before I started,” she said. “I was 3 and I was jumping all over the place. I broke five bones before I was 5 years old, I cracked my skull open when I was 2, so I think part of my introduction to gymnastics was my parents wanting me to learn how to fall.”
She was a quick study, and gymnastics had a magnetic pull that became the dominant influence as she grew up. Although she thrived competitively, it came at a cost.
“I loved performing. Floor was always my favorite event because of that. Dance was a big part also for me,” said Burkholder. “It was all I knew, really. I was training 10 hours a day by the time I was 10 years old. I honestly didn’t even really have time for school. My education took a back seat and suffered a little bit, so I had to overcome a lot of obstacles.
“I bounced around so much … alternative schools, Christian schools that were only four hours a day, definitely not where I should have been.
“I had a scholarship waiting for me that I couldn’t take because I wasn’t academically eligible. I had to wait a year after I graduated high school to fix some things before I could come to LSU. D-D was very helpful in helping me get eligible, and she was pretty adamant about getting me to LSU.”
By then, she was a highly-coveted recruit.
“I pretty much had any choice I wanted, and LSU was my first trip. It wasn’t that far away from home, one state over, and it was my first choice, especially after I took my visit. It felt like home, all the way around,” said Burkholder, who gave good-faith visits to Utah and Oklahoma and called off another to Georgia – where current Tigers’ coach Jay Clark was an assistant, and realized her heart was calling Baton Rouge.
Burkholder took her academics more seriously although she didn’t have the laser focus on her post-competitive career. She changed her major several times ad ultimately graduated in general studies with minors in sociology, communication studies and dance.
“That allowed me to take classes that I felt would be very useful in life, not knowing yet what I wanted to do for a career,” she said, noting that it proved to be an ideal foundation for what has become a career in alcoholic beverage sales for world-renowned Disaronno, which notably produces the world’s favorite Italian liqueur. She oversees the company’s accounts in south Texas and all of Louisiana.
That vocation introduced her to a Houston-area restaurant manager, Andrew Coulter, who has since entered the construction business. They married July 13, 2020 and last year April gave birth to 13-month-old daughter Adelyn Dawn, who shares her mom’s middle name and already, a love for dancing.
One of Burkholder’s best friends during their days as Tigers was Ashleigh Clare-Kearney, who was a freshman when Burkholder was a junior. She was Clare-Kearney’s host on her recruiting visit, a roommate on away trips, and neighbors in LSU’s West Campus Apartments. The two became inseparable.
“We hung out with the same group of people, we enjoyed the same type of music and we were very much homebodies,” Clare-Kearney said. “Over time, we just naturally grew closer because we had similar interests, we lived together and had the same type of mentality about things outside of the gym and inside the gym and wanting to do something different that LSU gymnastics had never done before.”
She didn’t realize it at the time, but Burkholder was an incredible mentor to Clare-Kearney. Their visions aligned. Their mentality was the same. Their goals were simple: make LSU’s gymnastics program the best in the country.
Mission accomplished.
“She was extremely coachable,” Breaux said. “Her leadership style was more do what I do, work how I work, train how I work – it was more of a follow by example. Ashleigh Clare-Kearney was probably her best friend in college and a fabulous mentor and role model for April.”
“It was awesome to have an upperclassman, and someone that had the success that she’d had, as a mentor,” Clare-Kearney said. “At the time, I didn’t necessarily view it as mentorship because we were 18 and 20, but that’s exactly what it was.”
While national championships, record-breaking crowds, and billions of social media engagements have become the “new norm” for the Tiger program, it wasn’t always like that. Far from it, actually. Burkholder, along with Breaux, were key to building LSU gymnastics into what it is today – one of the hottest tickets in town.
“She was very instrumental in building and laying the foundation for the team and allowing the team to propel in the way it has,” Clare-Kearney said. “It was the April Burkholder years where attendance started to grow, there started to be more excitement around LSU gymnastics.
Burkholder stepped onto LSU’s campus in 2002 as a rising star and left as the most decorated gymnast in school history four years later. Today, even after the program’s first NCAA championship in 2024 and numerous great teams and great gymnasts, Burkholder’s accomplishments still rank among the very best in LSU history.
When she left LSU, Burkholder had won a total of 108 individual event titles, the program record until she was eclipsed a few years later by Clare-Kearney’s 114. Her eight perfect 10s (four on floor exercise, two on vault and two on beam) are still tied for the fourth-most in LSU history. And her 39.875 all-around score in 2003 in a meet with Centenary and Texas Woman’s University stood as the program’s best mark for 21 years until a 39.925 by Bryant in 2024.
During her time as a Tiger, Burkholder compiled 14 All-American honors (seventh-most ever at LSU), and was two-time SEC and NCAA Central Region Gymnast of the Year in addition to being a four-time All-SEC selection. As the program continued to grow, so did she.
“She’s an example of what it means to work hard and achieve more,” Breaux said. “Every year she got better, achieved more – and she was great when she arrived.”
An inductee in 2015 into the LSU Athletics Hall of Fame, Burkholder is deeply appreciative of her impending enshrinement in the state sports shrine – as only the fourth gymnast, following 1984 Olympic gold medalist Kathy Johnson, Breaux and another Tiger great, 2019 inductee Susan Jackson.
“After dedicating my life to this sport, and having to overcome a lot of obstacles, a lot of challenges, this puts it all together and makes it that much more meaningful,” said Burkholder, who turns 42 on July 2. “Hearing about the process and seeing everyone who’s been inducted and those who are in this class, it’s really special to reach this point. It solidifies things and makes it all worth it.”
Burkholder’s place in history is most deserving to those that know her best.
“Incredibly deserving,” Clare-Kearny said. “A girl from Houston that brought so much energy and excitement to the PMAC on Friday nights. I think it’s amazing that she’s being honored and recognized, especially all these years later. She was a pivotal part of laying the foundation for LSU gymnastics.”
Harrison Valentine, a 2022 LSU graduate, is already an award-winning writer and content creator wrapping up his sixth year with the Tigers’ athletic department, his first as assistant director of strategic initiatives. Among his prize-winning subjects are 2024 LSHOF inductee Seimone Augustus and former LSU baseball ace Paul Skenes.
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