University of Minnesota Athletics
Gophers Open Season With Alumni Meet
1/9/2011 12:00:00 AM | Men's Gymnastics
The season is officially underway for the 2011 University of Minnesota men's gymnastics team.
The Gophers got their annual early-season look as they took on former Gopher gymnasts in the Alumni Meet on Saturday night.
Keeping with tradition, the current Minnesota varsity team fell to the alumni 359.5-337.9, making it the 44th consecutive time the alumni have won the match.
"I was pretty pleased," Minnesota head coach Mike Burns said. "We still look like we're not in the best shape right now as far as filling routines, but overall our guys did a nice job tonight."
The overall goal of the match was to give the Minnesota coaching staff one last look at the current roster so that final adjustments can be made to the lineup while also letting the athletes get a few nerves out in a more relaxed atmosphere meet.
While early season mistakes are perhaps inevitable, several of the varsity athletes still had solid performances.
Matt Frey had an outstanding night scoring a total of 81.9 on the all-around, including an event-high score of 15.7 on the vault, which was only time all night that a varsity player held the high score on an event.
Senior Michael Hillin also put in a terrific performance on both the parallel bars and pommel horse, scoring 14.2 and 14.1 respectively. DJ Repp scored 15.6 on vault and a team-high 13.9 on the high bar.
Despite possibly being assisted by the friendly scoring for the alumni, the overall winner for the night was former Gopher Guillermo Alvarez who finished with an overall score of 90.45.
"It's great to have a full floor and hard mat landings," Burns said. "Getting the guys out there, and coming away healthy and we had some pretty decent routines...it's not bad for this point in the season and coming back from Winter break."
The Gophers will open the regular season next weekend at the Windy City Invitational in Chicago, Ill.
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