Dec. 6, 2009
Dec. 5, 2009
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IOWA CITY, IA – The Iowa men’s and women’s gymnastics team competed in the Black and Gold Intrasquad meet today in front of a standing room only crowd at the UI Fieldhouse. The teams were well matched but the Gold team won with a score of 405.23. The Black team scored 396.48 for a second place finish.
“The turnout was fantastic,” said Men’s Gymnastics Head Coach Tom Dunn. “We usually don’t try to compete with a basketball game, but I guess we have a decent fan base this year we will make every effort to give them a good show every time out.”
“The crowd was fantastic and the atmosphere was electric,” said Women’s Gymnastics Head Coach Larissa Libby. “I definitely think that having that many people watching raised the level of what my team was able to do. It’s exciting to see everyone get hyped up a little more than they usually are because of the sea of black and gold. It was great to see that support for the men’s and women’s teams.”
The women competed on vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise. The men competed on floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bar and high bar.
“Matt McGrath had a great performance in his first Black and Gold meet,” Dunn said. “He passed the freshman final and showed that he can compete. On the other end of the team, seniors Jon Buese and Joel Snyder finished strong on parallel bars & horizontal bar. We had a couple of great vaults from Ben Ketelsen and Adam Wilson and Jacob Swafford looked great on pommel horse. Overall, we are starting the season way ahead of where we were last year.”
“I was pleased by the overall effort of the entire team,” Libby said. “We did a great job of pulling together and working on the little things we’ve worked hard on in practice.”
Black Team Jack McClay Todd Becker Jacob Swafford Anton Gryshayev John Haines Brody Shemansk Ben Ketelsen Blaine Klaczak Taylor McClendon Zach Cazabon Jenny Donar Arielle Sucich Becky Simbhudas Kelly Galau Emma Stevenson Andrea Hurlburt Jordan Eszlinger Heather Fomon Olivia Beatty
Gold Team Danny Kuklinski Matt McGrath Joel Snyder Reid Urbain Adam Wilson Timm Krueger Jon Buese Michael Jiang Houry Gebeshian Annie Szatkowski Jessa Hansen Amy Center Rachel Corcoran Melissa Miller Rachel Nash Jennie Schurman Kaitlynn Urano