University of Minnesota Athletics
Session IV Quotes
4/19/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Gymnastics
On how it feels to win the pommel horse:
“It’s an amazing feeling. Last year I tried to win the event, but things didn’t go how I wanted them to. The pressure got to me and I took the loss pretty hard. Coming in this year winning was one of my individual goals. I fought through the pressure this year and I had a different turnout. This means so much to me.”
On his mindset coming into the championship:
“I talked to myself that I needed to think of one skill at a time. I worked hard everyday in the gym and I knew that I would be okay coming into the championship.”
Rings winner Evan Roth of the University of California-Berkeley
On winning the rings:
“This is inexplicable at the moment. I’ve been working all year for this. This is a dream come true.”
On his mindset before competing:
“I wasn’t thinking about winning at all. I was trying to do another routine and earn my chance to perform. This was just another routine and winning wasn’t the goal. I can’t control winning. I can only control my efforts.”
Floor exercise and vault winner Steven Legendre of the University of Oklahoma
On winning three individual titles this weekend:
It’s definitely a good feeling on an individual level. It’s kind of overshadowed by not winning the team championship, which was definitely my goal and the team’s goal coming into this weekend. On an individual level, it's definitely a good accomplishment. It shows a lot of the hard work that I’ve put in through the years has paid off.
On what he plans to do to improve:
Not winning the team championship is going to motivate us to go home and get in the gym and learn new skills. We’re going to work our butts off to be as good as we can be. Hopefully we can come back next year and win.
Parallel bars and horizontal bar winner Paul Ruggeri of the University of Illinois
On winning two events at the championship:
It feels great to win, especially since I had surgery halfway through the season. To come back this strong is absolutely thrilling.
On Illinois winning three individual awards tonight after struggling in the team championship last night:
This shows we’re one of the best teams in the country, and that we just had an off day yesterday. If we would have had a good day, we would have been right on top of everyone else. It just shows that we’re going to have some good years ahead of us.
