University of Minnesota Athletics
Gophers Take Down Iowa on the Road
2/12/2011 12:00:00 AM | Men's Gymnastics
The University of Minnesota men's gymnastics team walked away from Iowa holding its head high in victory on Friday night.
The Gophers took down the Hawkeyes by a score of 336.5 to 330.1 in the season's first match-up against only a Big Ten opponent.
While the Gophers had to deal with a few injuries, including Harris Coleman having to be pulled from the floor exercise, and had a couple of misses on a few routines, they are still walking away from the meet feeling good about winning on the road against a conference opponent.
"I'm overall really happy with how it turned out," Minnesota head coach Mike Burns said. "It wasn't the most beautiful win and we still have some things to clean up, but our goal was to come out of Iowa with a win and that's what we did. "
The highlight performance of the night came courtesy of freshman Adam Kern who put up a season-best score of 15.6 on the vault. Fellow freshman Justin "Yoshi" Morinishi did a good job in place of Coleman on the floor exercise as he posted a score of 13.6. Harris was still able to compete on the pommel horse and posted a solid score of 14.5.
One of the unsung heroes of the night was junior Ross Cameratta who was able to put up a score of 14.0 on both the rings and parallel bar, as well as a score of 13.4 on the high bar and 13.3 on the pommel horse.
"Ross had a really solid night for us, he may not be the flashiest gymnast, but he's very consistent and that helped us out a lot tonight," Burns said. "Kern's performance on the vault was fantastic, that's a great step for him. Harris came out and gave his best performance so far this season on the horse and Yoshi Morinishi really stepped up and came through for us tonight on the floor when Harris couldn't compete."
The Gophers return to action next Friday when they host the Air Force Academy at the Sports Pavilion at 7 p.m.
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