BATON ROUGE – LSU gymnastics head coach D-D Breaux announced Monday the signing of Jessica Savona for the 2013 season.

 

A native of Mississauga, Ontario, Savona trains as a Canadian Senior High Performance gymnast for coaches Kelly and Sue Manjak at Oakville Gymnastics.

 

Savona is a six-time Canadian National Team member, and she has represented Canada in several international meets, including the 2010 Pan Am Championships in Mexico, the 2010 World Championships in the Netherlands and the 2011 Japan Cup.

 

“I am really excited about Jessica because she has an extremely high level of difficulty in each event, and she performs skills that can compete on the world stage,” Breaux said. “She is truly an elite-level athlete, so to bring in a freshman of that quality along with Randii Wyrick and the squad we already have in place will only make us better.”

 

The daughter of James and Ameena, Savona has recorded impressive finishes in national events. She captured second place in the all-around at the 2011 Canadian Championships and earned first-place finishes on beam and floor.

 

At the 2011 Wild Rose meet, she won the floor title, placed second in the all-around and finished third on beam and sixth on bars.

 

Most recently, Savona competed at the 2012 International Gymnix Challenge in Montreal where she placed fourth in the all-around and qualified for the event finals in bars.

 

“Jessica’s coaches, Kelly and Sue, have done a tremendous job with her,” Breaux said. “Whenever you have a student-athlete that is competing at the international level, you have done a great coaching job. The fact that she competes at a high level with a tremendous amount of difficulty is truly a compliment to her coaches.”

 

Savona will graduate from Abbey Park High School in May and enroll at LSU in the fall. She will compete as a true freshman in 2013, joining Randii Wyrick as the only two freshmen in the class. Wyrick signed with the Tigers during the fall signing period. She is a Level 10 competitor for Brown’s Las Vegas and is a four-time J.O. Nationals qualifier.

 

LSU returns 14 letterwinners, including four All-Americans, from the 2012 squad that placed ninth at the NCAA Championships, finishing in the top 10 for the 22nd time in school history and 13th in the last 15 seasons.

Here's our interview with Savona after team prelims at the 2010 World Championships in Rotterdam. She talks about her Michael Jackson floor routine and competing with the Canadian team: 

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