Climbing Up, Climbing Back

While the 2026 season so far hasn’t started the way the Tigers trained for, Chio’s sophomore campaign is back on track after being limited to bars at LSU’s Gym 101 on January 2, to protect a rolled ankle. Following her standout meet at Sprouts, she was named the Week 2 SEC Gymnast of the Week. Last week, despite a fall on bars in the first rotation in Stegeman against Georgia, she rallied back to score a 9.925 on vault, 9.850 on floor, and a sensational 9.950 to match her career-high on beam. Winning both vault and beam made for 27 career titles to date. If she continues on the trajectory she’s currently on for the Tigers, she’ll become one of the most decorated athletes the program has ever seen.

​Overcoming early challenges in a season already headlined by upsets could be exactly what the Tigers need to go lights out going forward. For Chio, it’s all about staying normal. Nothing extra. Just do your gymnastics.

She told us she believes part of the team’s challenge in Fort Worth last year was being too in their heads about the competition and the job in front of them, and trying to be too perfect instead of doing their normal gymnastics the way they did at SECs. It’s something she wants to make sure she meets head-on going forward.

“I think that our mindsets shifted from SECs when we went out there, and everybody did their best gymnastics—we did our best gymnastics being so calm and just so loose. [At NCAA Championships], starting on bars, we didn’t have our greatest rotation ever. That had the team a little bit more on edge, and believing that now we have to be perfect in order to try to move on. Trying to be perfect made it worse. Instead of us trying to do our normal, we were just trying to be too perfect at Nationals, and it just led us in the wrong direction.”

That recognition is part of the growth she’s undergone from her freshman year to now, alongside learning and embracing her role as a new leader and mentor to the freshman class. She said she’s enjoying sharing her experience as a student athlete with them and providing them with support in any way she can.

“I know what to expect. I’m not walking in blindsided,” she said. “Now, I’m just trying to help and be a leader for those freshmen, and our transfers, and just guide them in the best way possible. They’re doing a great job. It’s hard coming in as a freshman. I think all of the freshmen have done a really good job of just trying to learn the different roles in the different aspects of LSU gymnastics and play their part.”

It’s a sentiment LSU head coach Jay Clark echoed about Chio going into this season.

“Kailin has shown a tremendous amount of growth in terms of her maturity and learning to deal with success, and sometimes, adversity, or outcomes that she doesn’t like,” Clark told us. “Emotionally, she’s much more mature than she was, and able to control her reactions to circumstances, and therefore she has been able to become a better leader and example for the entire team. It’s great when you can see freshmen go from one stage to the next, as they often do. There’s a lot of examples of that on our team, and I think Kailin is one of those in a long line who is going through that and doing great.”