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]
Part 2 In part two of our series analyzing our top elite gymnasts, guest blogger Matthew Rusk examines Steven Legendre, Danell Leyva, Tim McNeill, Daniel Ribeiro, Paul Ruggeri and David Sender. Rusk goes into much detail as he explores the strengths and weaknesses of each gymnast. How well they perform at VISAs will determine whether or not they will be chosen to represent Team USA at the the 2009 London World Championships. Rusk wraps things up with his predictions [...more]
StickItMedia is pleased to have guest blogger, Matthew Rusk, present his pre-U.S. Men's Gymnastics Championships analysis of the major players vying to make the World Championships squad. Matthew is a 16-year-old gymnastics enthusiast from Houston, TX and is the former editor of the blog Polished Gymnastics 101. As you will see, he has very impressive writing skills for such a young man. He leaves no stone unturned as he diligently dishes out the details for the top 12 gymnasts he believes will be fighting it out for coveted spots on the World Team. In his first post, [...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]
USA Gymnastics released the start list for VISAs, which will be held August 12-15 in Dallas. Included on the list for the Senior Division qualifiers are age-eligible Junior Division qualifiers Jake Dalton, CJ Maestas and Alex Naddour. Dalton and Naddour will be competing for Oklahoma next season. Jacob Dastrup, who competed as a Level 9 […] [...more]
Japan's Kohei Uchimura made a statement to the world today at the 2009 Japan Cup. He hit on all six events to post an outstanding 92.75 to win the men's all-around competition, thus establishing him as the favorite going into Worlds in October. Germany's Fabian Hambuchen followed-up his impressive performance in yesterday's team competition, tallying a 92.10 to finish [...more]
Team USA struggled against a strong field at today's 2009 Japan Cup. Steve Legendre fell twice on floor and Sho Nakamori hurt his knee on high bar. Meanwhile, Jonathan Horton had the second highest score on high bar (15.85) and had a nice 16.00 on vault to lead Team USA. However, it was not nearly enough as Team Japan [...more]
Today's Men's Qualifier at the U.S. Olympic Training Center produced twenty-six Senior Division gymnasts qualifiers for the 2009 VISA Championships. Two Ohio State gymnasts, Brandon Wynn and Jake Bateman, posted the highest scores of the day to lead all qualifiers. Among the top clubbers who qualified to compete in the Senior Division were [...more]
