Junior Amber Lowe and sophomores Sophia Rice and Emerson Smith from the West Virginia University gymnastics team completed their participation as individual event specialists in the Second Round of the NCAA Regional Championships at the Maravich Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Apr. 2.
The event marked the end of West Virginia’s 2026 gymnastics season, with each athlete representing the team in different apparatuses. Lowe competed on balance beam, Rice took part on vault, and Smith qualified for floor exercise. The Mountaineers’ athletes rotated alongside Nebraska during the meet.
Smith matched her season-high score with a 9.9 on floor exercise during the opening rotation, tying for fifth overall among gymnasts in her session. Rice scored a 9.775 for her Tsuk Full vault routine during the second rotation. Lowe was last to compete for West Virginia but experienced a fall during her balance beam performance, earning an 8.8.
With this competition, West Virginia closed its season with an overall record of 9-14 and a Big 12 Conference mark of 1-5. Throughout the year, WVU achieved six scores above 195.0 points and reached a season high of 196.35 at Towson on March 1.
Both vault and floor lineups finished within the top forty nationally according to Road to Nationals rankings—No. 32 on vault and No. 39 on floor exercise events respectively. Freshman Kayla Smith also had a notable debut year by competing all-around in every meet and surpassing five hundred points—a milestone only two other freshmen have achieved previously at West Virginia since at least 2008.
