Haleigh Bryant, a national champion gymnast from LSU, has been selected as the Allstate Sugar Bowl’s James J. Corbett Award winner as the top female amateur athlete in the state of Louisiana.
The New Orleans Sports Awards Committee picked Bryant as the winner, and the announcement was made Monday.
Bryant, a senior from North Carolina, became just the second LSU gymnast to win the NCAA individual all-around title when she posted a score of 39.7125 at the NCAA championships. She finished as one of the top-10 performers on every event with her scores of 9.900 on vault, 9.925 on bars, 9.950 on beam and 9.9375 on floor in the final four. Susan Jackson is the only other LSU gymnast to win the all-around title back in 2010.
Bryant’s efforts also led the Tigers to the program’s first-ever team national championship.
“My main goal was to win an SEC championship and a national championship,” Bryant said. “It was good for me to focus on those things, and when that happened, the individual honors followed.
"This year exceeded my dreams; I’m so thankful for my teammates and coaches. I couldn’t have done any of this without all of them.”
Bryant swept all five NCAA All-America honors after her standout performances at the championships in Fort Worth, Texas. This moved her count to 10 All-America honors on the year after taking home five honors in the regular season, making her the first LSU gymnast to record All-America honors on every event and the all-around in both the regular season and the postseason.
She also holds the program record for perfect 10.0 scores with 18, as well as having earned the highest all-around score (39.925) in LSU history.
“I wanted to do everything possible to get this team to where it deserves to be,” Bryant said. “This program deserves everything. That was my main goal.
"I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without my teammates and coaches. We all work so hard as a team; we all supported each other. It means so much.”
Bryant is the fourth LSU gymnast to be recognized with the Corbett Award. She joins Jackson, Sarah Finnegan (2019) and Ashleigh Gnat (2017), who is now an assistant coach for the Tigers.
“[The Corbett Award] is such an honor. I’ve looked up to those girls for so long,” Bryant said. “I watched them on TV. To follow in their footsteps is an honor. To accomplish what my idols accomplished feels amazing. Seeing their success is why I came to LSU. It’s an honor to continue that.”
Bryant also earned the 2024 AAI Award, recognized as the Heisman Trophy for women’s gymnastics; SEC gymnast of the year; and the Honda Award for gymnastics.
“She’s a generational talent and a generational person,” LSU coach Jay Clark said. “The excellence she shows on the floor, she also shows in every other aspect of her life. It’s impossible to quantify that. She is the rock that everything else was built around. And she understood that everything she accomplished wouldn’t have happened without the team.”