Random Thoughts on Men’s Gymnastics 8/18/09
Posted on 18 August 2009 by admin
What a great two days of gymnastics last week in Dallas! The 2009 U.S. Championships had unprecedented media coverage, led by a deluge of Twitter updates, topped off with a live Friday night webcast by Universal Sports and NBC’s one-hour recap of the men’s action on Saturday. @gymnastike and @Michigan_MGym provided great timely tweets and GymBlog’s Blythe Lawrence had live threads on both days. Gymnastike’s Ann Phillips had great interviews throughout the entire competition. Those unable to attend were treated to a constant stream of updates, guaranteed to keep them informed.
The 2009 Men’s Senior National Team was well represented by current NCAA athletes:
- Cal – Kyle Bunthuwong and Glen Ishino
- Ohio State – Brandon Wynn
- Oklahoma – Steven Legendre and Jake Dalton
- Stanford – Alex Buscaglia and Tim Gentry
*** Illinois’ Daniel Ribeiro was chosen as an alternate for the 2009 World Team
The Junior competition in Dallas was indicative of the impending long-term changing of the guard in men’s gymnastics. John Orozco, Sam Mikulak, CJ Maestas, Jake Martin and Jesse Glenn were recently tabbed to compete in international meets later this year. Orozco, along with Jake Dalton, will compete in Japan in September, while Mikulak, Maestas, Martin and Glenn are bound for Brazil to take part in the PAGU Championships in November. 2009 Level 9 JO Nationals all-around runnerup Sean Melton will also be making that trip.
Danell Leyva now has a firmly planted footprint on the trail to the 2012 London Olympics. Leyva finished number two behind Jonathan Horton in the number of points tallied to determine the makeup of the Senior National Team. He is slated to compete on high bar, and possibly parallel bars, at the 2009 World Championships. Leyva tied Horton for the U.S. high bar championship and was possibly a peach Diamidov away from winning on parallel bars. The last time we had a 17 year-old this far advanced on the world scene was Paul Hamm.
It was very nice to see Universal Sports play up John Orozco. Even better if they would have also covered the other Juniors who advanced to Day 2 competition. Orozco, Mikulak and Maestas all finished in the top 25 on Day 2. Orozco manhandled the Junior field on Day 1, winning an incredible five out of six events, which was a repeat of his earlier JO Nationals accomplishment. Jesse Glenn had the honor of taking the vault title, which prevented an Orozco clean sweep.
Next year’s Level 10 club season is going to be phenomenal, given the fact that many prominent 2009 Level 9s are advancing. Jacob Dastrup has already made the 14-15 Junior National Team, and will undoubtedly be followed next year by Sean Melton, Allan Bower and Timmy Wang.
16-year-old Matthew Rusk, who penned a couple of great guest blogs for StickItMedia, was featured on Gymnastike. Rusk provided a very nice re-cap of the Day 2 men’s action.
