Georgia’s Lily Smith Posts Historic All-Around Score, Georgia Notches Season-Bests

ATHENS, Ga.— The No. 21 Georgia gymnastics team notched season high scores on vault and bars, but ultimately fell to No. 8 Florida, 197.425-197.300, before a crowd of 9,449 spectators on Friday evening inside Stegeman Coliseum.

The GymDogs, who finished with their highest score this season, were led by Lily Smith. The freshman captured her first-ever all-around title in her second meet competing all four events, totaling a 39.600, which is the highest all-round score from a Georgia freshman since Courtney Kupets in 2006.

Georgia’s bars score of 49.500 is the highest mark since the 2019 NCAA Athens Regional. Sophomore Naya Howard, who made her first appearance this season after being injured, recorded a 9.875 on bars.

Additionally, five GymDogs notched season-high scores and four season-high scores were matched.

“I’m really proud with the way our team bounced back after last week,” head coach Courtney Kupets-Carter said. “Coming off our meet last weekend where we had more mistakes than we planned to, we put a lot of time and effort this week into really looking at every single thing that went wrong and why. It was really crucial for this team. To me now looking at it and seeing how they progressed every single day this week, that’s going to be what builds their experience this year. Even though you don’t want to go down, you want to keep building every week. You want to get higher scores, and we did not do that last week. It really gave us an opportunity to sit down and see what was going on with our team in the gym. I think it led to this meet, because we were able to put some things together that maybe we wouldn’t have seen if we didn’t have those mistakes. For us, it just shows them that everything they put into this team this week made a difference. It felt like a team. It felt like a group of individuals that were doing better because of their teammates next to them. That was really exciting as we move forward.”

Competing in Olympic order, the GymDogs began with a strong performance on vault, posting a season-high score of 49.150 in their first rotation. Ashlyn La Clair began the evening for Georgia by earning a new personal best in the event with a 9.850 performance. In Lily Smith’s second performance in the event, the freshman also posted a score of 9.850. From the third and fourth position, JaFree Scott and Katie Finnegan tied their season highs with a 9.825 and 9.850 respectively.

Georgia continued the energy as it moved onto bars, earning a 49.500. The GymDogs had three performances of at least a 9.900, led by Smith as she anchored the event with a 9.950, getting her third career event title. Scott and Holly Snyder each earned a 9.900. This marked a new personal best for Snyder in her second-career bars routine, while Scott notched her second score of 9.900 or better this season.

Scott anchored the team on balance beam, tying her career-best of 9.900 in her 15th collegiate performance. She was followed by Smith, who had her second-best career routine with a score of 9.875. Jaydah Battle and Zora Morgan each had a 9.875, which helped Georgia total 49.350, matching the season-high mark.

The GymDogs were just behind the Gators heading into their final rotation of the night on floor, 148.100-148.000. Smith won the event title for the second time in her career with a 9.925 in Georgia’s final performance of the evening, which ties her best. Amanda Cashman, who was fourth in the rotation, posted a season-high 9.875, while Wahl capped off her evening with a 9.850 to push her all-around score to 39.275.

Georgia will host LSU for its next meet inside Stegeman Coliseum on Friday, Feb. 9 at 5:45 p.m. ET. The GymDogs competed against the Tigers twice last season, averaging a score of 197.150 between the two meets.