Gymnasts Tie With Navy For ECAC Title

Saturday, April 2

Williamsburg, Va.

TBA

Army West Point

Team Finals

Gymnasts Tie With Navy For ECAC Title

April 02, 2016 | Men's Gymnastics

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. – The Army West Point gymnastics team jumped out to an early lead, but Navy rallied in the later events as the teams tied (423.400) for the 2016 Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Championship crown Saturday afternoon at host William & Mary's Kaplan Arena. It marked the first time there have been co-champions since Temple and East Stroudsburg University shared that honor in 1985.

With the automatic bid to the NCAA Championships on the line, Navy was awarded the tie-breaker based on a higher away score.

"The tie-breaking procedure uses the highest away score and Navy's was higher than ours," noted head coach Doug Van Everen. "They will go to the NCAAs as a team, but we will go individually.

"Vault is a high scoring event and I knew we would have to have about a four-point lead going into the last event, which we did. But some of our rings scores were a little tight and that made the difference there.

"We had a couple of mistakes here and there and that is the way it worked out this time. It is definitely a bummer. But we did a good job today."

It is the second straight year Army won the ECAC title, and is just the fourth time in school history that the No. 12 Black Knights earned back-to-back titles and the first time since 1952. It is No. 13 Navy's first ECAC or Eastern Intercollegiate Gymnastics League championship since 1989.

Black Knight senior J esse Glenn defended his all-around title for the third straight year posting an 86.95 and won high bar after equaling his career high with a 15.45. Junior Leo Genders set a career high 15.2 finishing first on floor exercise and was the lone gymnast to score in the 15-point range in that event as the Black Knights claimed the all-around title along with taking two events the first day.

Glenn was also runner-up on vault posting a season-high 14.95, took third on floor exercise (14.8) and pommel horse (14.3), along with a sixth on parallel bars (13.90). Genders garnered third-place honors on high bar (14.55).

Seven Black Knights advanced in 17 events to Sunday's individual finals with Glenn competing in five events (pommel horse, floor exercise, vault, parallel bars and high bar) and freshman Cole Casanova, who finished third in all-around (84.20), qualifying in four (pommel horse, floor exercise, still rings and vault).

Meeting the standards in two events were Sam Kusnitz (vault, parallel bars), Nathan Goff (pommel horse, high bar) and Genders (floor exercise, high bar). Also competing are Elliott Herman and Ryan Wilson on still rings.

The Black Knights just missed breaking the school record on floor exercise after posting a season-best 72.20 as Army dominated that event with five Black Knights placing among the top six led by Glenn's winning mark. Ranked second nationally in this event, Glenn was the lone gymnast to score in the 15-point range (tied his career mark of 15.45) on high bar with Navy's Jonathan Tang a distant second (14.6)

Genders led an Army sweep of the next four spots taking third (14.55) followed by Goff (14.5), Kusnitz (14.4) with Casanova (14.3) sixth.

The Black Knights won three team events to include floor exercise (72.5), vault (72.95) and high bar (73.2) with Navy winning still rings (71.7) and parallel bars (68.2) and were denied a third when William & Mary edged the Mids on pommel horse (69.95-69.65).

Herman turned in Army's top mark on still rings (14.10) to tie for seventh with Wilson recording a 13.9 to finish 10^th just ahead of Casanova (13.8). Glenn (13.9), Kusnitz (13.75) and Goff (13.50) recorded Army's highest scores on parallel bars to finish among the top eleven. In addition to Glenn's second and Casanova's sixth on vault (14.7), Kusnitz posted a 14.6 to place eighth and Joe Pritts was ninth (14.45).

In the team scoring, host William & Mary finished third with a score of 416.850, while Springfield College totaled 406.300 to place fourth. Temple posted a team mark of 403.450 for a fifth-place finish with the University of Illinois at Chicago rounding out the field with a score of 387.800.