University of Minnesota Athletics
Gophers Take Third at Windy City Invite
1/16/2011 12:00:00 AM | Men's Gymnastics
The University of Minnesota men's gymnastics team got its regular season started with a solid display at the 2011 Windy City Invitational in Chicago on Saturday night.
The Gophers finished the meet placing third out of the six teams with a combined score of 340.7.
Illinois won the event with a team score of 355.4, followed by Michigan, the Gophers, Ohio State, Iowa and hosting UIC.
"We're really pleased where we finished up," Minnesota head coach Mike Burns said. "We were only behind Illinois and Michigan, two of the top teams in the country, so we're really excited about finishing third. We hit our share routines, and we just kept fighting our way through and the guys never gave up."
Minnesota had several top performers in the event, including junior DJ Repp who finished sixth in the all-around with a score of 82.0. Junior Adam LaFleur finished third on the parallel bars with a score of 14.6 and Travis Heaver placed seventh on the rings with a score of 14.2.
"DJ Repp did a nice job and had several good routines for us," Burns said. "John Scallon was our top guy on the pommel horse, and I was really excited about our p-bar routine with Adam LaFleur competing on p-bars for the first time and so that was a really exciting start to the p-bars there."
A great sign for the Gophers moving forward into the season was the numerous solid scores put up by their freshman.
John Scallon placed fifth on the pommel horse with a score of 14.3. Zack Chase, Josh Wokurka and Repp tied for eighth on the floor exercise with scores of 14.3. Matt Frey and Repp tied for third on the vault with scores of 15.8.
"When you have so many new guys, you have to wait and see how they do in a team atmosphere," Burns said. "They really gelled tonight, and the freshman looked like they had a lot of experience. This is an experience we can build off of for sure."
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Players Mentioned
