LSU Gymnast Aleah Finnegan named 2025 AAI Award Finalist
Tina Howell • March 19, 2025
LSU Gymnast Aleah Finnegan has been named a finalist for the prestigious 2025 AAI Award, which is awarded to the top senior gymnast in the nation by the American Athletic Inc.
Finnegan was chosen a finalist from a field of 59 nominees. She is joined by Oklahoma’s Jordan Bowers and Audrey Davis, Oregon State’s Jade Carey, Florida’s Leanne Wong and Utah’s Grace McCallum.
Voting will be conducted by NCAA women's gymnastics head coaches with the winner to be announced at the NCAA Championships Banquet in Fort Worth, TX next month.
LSU has seen four AAI Award Winners in school history, the most by any school since 2010 and the most in the SEC. The prestigious group includes Haleigh Bryant (2024), Aleah's sister, Sarah Finnegan (2019), Ashleigh Gnat (2017) and Susan Jackson (2010).
This year, Finnegan has competed in the all-around in all but two meets this year, putting up season highs of 9.950 on vault and bars, 10.0 on beam, 9.975 on floor and 39.725 in the all-around. Nationally, she has ranked amongst the top 20 all-around gymnasts in the nation for nine out of 12 weeks of regular season competition. Finnegan is an eight time All-American and All-SEC member who owns eight perfect scores in her career, with the most recent coming this season on beam. She was the first Tiger this year to earn a perfect 10 and it was only the third perfect score on beam in the country. Her eight-career perfect 10’s is the sixth most in LSU history, including the second most on floor.
She owns 36 titles in her career so far at LSU, with 13 of those coming in 2025. She owns 14 titles on floor, 10 on beam, six on vault, five in the all-around and one on bars. Her 14 floor titles ties for the seventh most in LSU history, which she currently shares with her sister, Sarah Finnegan.
On top of her collegiate success, Finnegan has continued be a great representative of LSU across NCAA Gymnastics and the world stage, becoming the first LSU Gymnast to represent the Tigers in the Olympics when she competed in the qualifying rounds of the 2024 Paris Olympics with Team Philippines.
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