While top-ranked Penn State enjoyed a bye week, Oklahoma and Michigan continued to creep up on the Nittany Lions in the NCAA Men's Gymnastics team rankings. The Sooners had their best team performance, as they posted the nation's second highest score of the season (441.50). In a dual meet against Stanford, the Wolverines also made a statement with a team season-high and the nation's fourth best score (439.75). Oklahoma, while [...more]
In an action-packed weekend of men's gymnastics, practically every club team and Div. I program in the country competed. The largest meet of the young season was the Windy City Invitational, hosted by UIC. This meet featured a club competition with teams from most parts of the country. Saturday night's collegiate competition had all but two Big 10 programs. In their inaugural meet of the season, Michigan (431.30) fared pretty well by outlasting [...more]
The 2013 NCAA Men's Gymnastics season is officially off and running. A new scoring system greets gym fans, with a 6-up/5-count scenario, which will be replaced by a 5-up/5-count method after March 1. Nevertheless, the team scores are going to look rather wacky at first glance. Freshmen played a huge role in the inaugural weekend by posting some of the highest scores. Illinois' Joey Peters was the nation's [...more]
Six members of the U.S.A. team delegation that will compete in the 2013 Maccabi Games were officially announced this past weekend. The Maccabi Games, the 3rd largest international competition after the Olympics and PanAm Games, will be held in Israel July 17-30. Leading the U.S. squad will be 2012 Sr. National Team member [...more]
As of November 16, several signings are unreported for college men's gymnastics. The day's biggest announcement came from Stanford, as they announced the signing of Junior National Team member Akash Modi. This was a huge recruiting success for Stanford, as they will be getting a budding superstar capable of contributing on all six events right away. Modi placed 2nd AA at this year's U.S. Championships, and has already [...more]
I can't recall in the past seeing many gymnasts, if any at all, announcing their college commitments before the early signing period. So far, as of October 30, five gymnasts have publically announced via Twitter and/or Facebook. There may be others, so please don't hesitate to correct me on this. This is a very cool development for college MAG. Usually, the process is battened down as tight as a drum. Thanks to social media, many of our top high school seniors are talking about their college recruiting trips. The naysayers may think otherwise, but this has a [...more]
The early signing period for 2013-2014 recruits is rapidly approaching (Nov. 14-21). This year's crop of college MAG prospects looks to be every bit as good as last year's. We will be posting any signing news we get as soon as the ink is dry on the letters of intent. The recruits are now busy making their weekend visits to the schools that have expressed interest. Thanks to social media, the college MAG recruiting process is becoming a little more transparent than it has in previous years. This is a good thing for the sport. Football and basketball recruiting have always dominated [...more]
Post-season collegiate honors have been bestowed on many athletes, and the men's gymnastics community is well represented. One gymnast, in particular, ought to be singled out for his academic prowess. Minnesota's Nathan Fortunato was named as a Big 10 All-Academic scholar athlete, and he earned it about as well as it can be done. Fortunato put up a [...more]
No gymnastics fan needs to be reminded of all the angst and uncertainty the Cal Men's Gymnastics program was about to go through less than two years ago. As we all know, things ended on a happy note; the program was cut, and later reinstated, thanks to the efforts of many enthusiastic donors. The aftermath, however, left the program in a relative state of flux. No scholarship money and all the uncertainty left the Bears with an empty recruiting pipeline. Except for freshman walk-on [...more]
A great season of college men's gymnastics is now in the books, with the completion of event finals. The big winner was Stanford's Eddie Penev, taking titles on FX (16.10) and VT (16.50), and was the only gymnast who bagged two. Illinois' CJ Maestas (15.30) was the only freshman who won an event title, upsetting Penn State's Scott Rosenthal (15.25), the favorite going into the meet. Michigan's Sam Mikulak won his first individual event championship, easily getting [...more]
