Army West Point Athletics
Tuesday, April 13 - West Point Showcased This Weekend
April 13, 2010 | General
While last week's Final Four may be the NCAA's most visible championship, this week 12 teams will arrive at West Point to compete for a national title of their own. Duke and Butler put on a great show in Indianapolis, but it won't even come close to the aerial display at Christl Arena.
Brian Gunning with you on this sunny Tuesday afternoon on the banks of the Hudson, just two days before the start of the 2010 NCAA Men's Gymnastics Championships.
Preparations for the championship event are already in full swing. The facilities crew set the arena up last week teams began arriving for practice on Monday. When the competition begins, Illinois, Oklahoma, Michigan, Stanford, Ohio State, California, Minnesota, Penn State, Illinois-Chicago, Nebraska, Iowa and Temple will start their quest for championship glory.
The first session of preliminaries starts on Thursday at 1 p.m. A second session will take place at 7 p.m. The top three teams from each session will advance to Friday night's competition, where the team champion along with the all-around individual champion will be crowned. Saturday's action will determine the individual champions in each of the six events (floor exercise, still rings, pommel horse, vault, high bar, parallel bars). Both Friday and Saturday's sessions begin at 7 p.m.
Our resident gymnastics expert, Mady Salvani, put together all you need to know about who is competing and details for attending the event.
Army will have for cadets vying for individual championships, including senior Ty Smith in the all-around. Sophomore Jonathan Hoey will compete on the high bar, freshman Garrek Hojan-Clark qualified on the pommel horse, and freshman Kip Webber will perform in floor exercise.
This is the second time that West Point has played host to the men's gymnastics championships. Brian Lee earned All-America honors on the still rings in 2005, finishing second in his home arena.
Christl Arena and West Point as a whole will have a national audience for the event. ESPN2 will broadcast Friday night's team finals on a tape-delay basis on April 23 at 1:30 p.m.
Yours truly will be in attendance for each of the sessions making sure the media covering the event have everything they need. I'm normally not a big gymnastics person - I dreaded the tumbling lessons we had in PE during my elementary school years - but after attending a couple of events since I arrived at West Point, I have a much greater appreciation for these guys. How they do some of the things they do is absolutely amazing to me. Not only does it take tremendous physical skill to accomplish their routines, but the intensity and focus required is unbelievable. I would take one look down on the high bar and pass out, but these guys are doing giant swings and release moves. I might give it a shot if the floor was made of foam rubber and I was wearing a football helmet and some skateboard pads.
Needless to say, I'm very much looking forward to watching some of the best athletes in the nation.
That does it for me today. I think I'm going to go practice my vaults. I don't think my downstairs neighbor will be too thrilled.
GO ARMY!!
