April 5, 2011
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IOWA CITY, Iowa — The University of Iowa men’s gymnastics team was one of 12 teams selected to compete at the 2011 National Collegiate Men’s Gymnastics National Qualifier. The announcement was made Tuesday by the NCAA Men’s Gymnastics Committee.
“I am very excited to compete in day one of the NCAA Championships (National Qualifier) as a team,” Head Coach JD Reive said. “My goal coming in here this year was to put us in a position to make it to the team finals. This is the first step toward that goal.”
Iowa enters as the No. 11 seed, and will compete in one of the two pre-qualifying sessions held April 14 at Ohio State’s St. John Arena in Columbus, Ohio. The Hawkeyes will compete in the evening session at 6 p.m., along with No. 2 Stanford, No. 3 California, No. 6 Michigan, No. 7 Ohio State and No. 10 Nebraska.
The first qualifying session starts at noon and will consist of No. 1 seed Oklahoma, No. 4 Illinois, No. 5 Penn State, No. 8 Minnesota, No. 9 Air Force and No. 12 Illinois-Chicago.
Half of this year’s qualifying teams are from the Big Ten. The six Big Ten teams include Illinois, Michigan, Ohio State, Minnesota, Penn State and Iowa.
The top three teams, plus the top three all-around competitors and the top three individuals on each event not already qualified, will advance from each pre-qualifying session to the finals. Final competitions are April 15-16 at St. John Arena.
Matt McGrath (floor exercise), Mike Jiang (pommel horse) and Zach Cazabon (parallel bars) each advanced through the pre-qualifying session to the NCAA Championships last season. Jiang earned All-America honors on pommel horse.