‘She’s a bull rider’: How competitive instinct, and intangible toughness, made Alex Irvine the woman for the job to anchor Auburn’s bars
Anchoring Auburn's bars lineup hasn't been for the faint of heart in 2026. But after she moved across the country on a bet on herself, Irvine has proven she has the grit and guts to do it.
Jeff Graba’s mother grew up a cowgirl.
That’s how the story goes: Her foster father worked at King Ranch. She grew up around horses, learned them. Before races, she could pick the winner, just by looking in their eyes. That’s how the story goes, anyway.
And when Alex Irvine first competed at Auburn, Graba’s mom was in the stands. Auburn’s second meet of the 2025 season was in cowgirl country, at the Lone Star Collegiate in San Antonio. Irvine, a former walk-on at UCLA, had just transferred in and was walking on at Auburn too. Irvine got in on bars in an exhibition routine. She did fine, getting a 9.750.
“It was a good routine but it wasn’t fantastic,” Graba says himself. “But we got done with the meet and I’m thinking of Alex a certain way: I’m thinking she’s a competitor. That night, my mom came over and she’s like, ‘Listen ... that Alex kid? She’s going to be your anchor.’ I’m like, ‘Really?’ She’s like, ‘She’s a killer. She’s a competitive young person that, she will not take no for an answer. She’s going to go all the way to the end.’
“She’s like, ‘She’s a bull rider.’”
She saw it in Irvine’s eyes, and how she carried herself, and sure enough, Irvine has been Auburn’s anchor on bars all season in 2026 and shined in the role — coming up clutch time and again, performing at her best even in pressure-packed situations.
Irvine matched her career-high of 9.950 last Friday against Missouri in Auburn’s regular-season finale. The Tigers now enter the postseason, first competing at the SEC Championship meet in the afternoon session at 2 p.m. Saturday on SEC Network, before awaiting their placement at NCAA Regionals on Monday.
“My mom does not know her — but my mom knows horses, my mom knows rodeo, she knows competition, and she’s right,” Graba said. “That’s what we saw in her. It’s not necessarily the gymnastics. It’s all the other stuff. This kid took a shot at walking on at UCLA, one of the best programs in the country, and thought she could work her way into lineups, and got frustrated. I mean, how many people do that? And then goes into the transfer portal, goes anywhere in the country, moves all the way across the country, walked on here, paid her own way, out-of-state tuition, to come here.
“I’ll take 50 of her.”
Gymnastics vocabulary 101
An exhibition routine is a routine that doesn’t count in the meet, but is done essentially by a bench player when there aren’t TV time restraints, in order to give them experience and for programs to get some extra feedback from the judges on how they’re scoring certain skills.
The anchor is the sixth routine out of six in a rotation, normally reserved for a team’s best performer, and one who can handle the pressure of seeing all five of her teammates’ routines already counted.
To go from exhibition routine to anchor in less than a year is like a bench player in another sport becoming an MVP in less than a year. Irvine has done that, and Graba’s mom called it after watching her perform once.
From UCLA to Auburn
Growing up and competing in Northern California, Irvine said she wanted to come to the SEC originally, but all her opportunities to begin with were on the West Coast.