According to Blythe Lawrence's blog at Examiner.com, a lot of exciting Junior assignments have been doled out by USA Gymnastics. Jake Dalton and John Orozco will be competing at the Japan Junior International Competition in Yokohama September 20-25. Dalton is now a freshman at Oklahoma. In fact he went straight from Dallas to Norman, OK right after VISAs. Dalton is also reportedly first in line for [...more]
Jonathan Horton can finally claim that elusive prize of U.S. Men's Gymnastics National Champion. The anchorman of our men's program ran away with the title by a margin of 3.4 points over surprise runner-up Tim McNeill. Running on sheer talent and adrenaline, Horton was easily able to absorb a fall on [...more]
What a night! Jonathan Horton launched a late drive to overcome David Sender's otherwise dominating performance. Horton's 15.90 on what else, high bar, did the trick. Didn't he do something similar about this time last year in Beijing? Horton posted an astounding 91.25 to take the lead after Day 1. Who said he wasn't ready? David Sender charged to a commanding lead after posting outstanding scores of 15.85 on rings and 17.05 on vault. Correct us if we're wrong, but [...more]
It was John Orozco Day in Dallas. The Bronx Bomber started out with great scores on pommel (14.70) and rings (14.55) and never looked back. Orozco won a staggering five out of six events and finished fifth on vault. Every score was over 14.00 in a fascinating display of power and consistency. His all-around score of 86.85 blew away the field. As Gymnastike's Anne Phillips tweeted after the meet, "seriously we should just go ahead and put him on the senior team." [...more]
For those unable to attend, it looks like there will be live scoring for each session of the men's competition at VISAs. Additionally, there will also be a "quick hits" running commentary section. As a reminder, the second day of the Men's Senior Division competition will be webcast on Universal Sports. For those who have Universal Sports on their cable system, Day 2 [...more]
While the Senior Division will get all the television and webcast coverage this week, the Junior Division will also be providing some great competition. Looks like we'll have to rely on YouTube to see how these guys do. The 14-15 division will be awesome. As for the 16-18 division, the field is strong, but is weaker compared to the field that competed at JO Nationals. The top gymnasts who competed at JOs have either [...more]
Today's New York Daily News posted an outstanding article about John Orozco. The article went into detail about his family and the long daily commute Orozco and his mother make every day to the gym. Orozco's father suffered a debilitating stroke two years ago and his mother suffers from various health maladies. Even if she is in severe pain, she gets up and gets her son from the Bronx to [...more]
A lot of stories have been going around about many of the men's NCAA gymnastics teams scoring high in the classroom. In particular, the Stanford men's team not only won the NCAA team championship, but they also had the highest cumulative team GPA of all NCAA men's gymnastics teams. That is huge! According to Sho Nakamori's blog, Stanford also had nine guys [...more]
Exclusive Interview with Woodward West Gymnastics Director Andy Timm Woodward West is a thriving camp for gymnastics, tumbling & trampoline, cheer, skateboarding, inline skating and BMX biking. The camp formally refers to itself as an action sports camp, though after observing the outrageous stunts the gymnasts, skaters and bikers perform, extreme sports is a more apt description for us. StickItMedia recently visited Woodward West, and we found it to be [...more]
Exclusive Interview: The recent Japan Cup was quite a learning experience for Danell Leyva. Though it wasn't his first international competition, it was definitely his first major one. Leyva was the youngest member on Team USA and was probably the youngest gymnast in the entire field. Pretty heady stuff for the 17 year-old from Miami, FL. He was rubbing elbows all week with past and future [...more]
