Confidence Lifted With Win Over Ohio State
3/25/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Gymnastics
Confidence Lifted With Win Over Ohio State
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25, 2009
Senior Joe Catrambone (Deptford, N.J./Gloucester Catholic) discusses the recent victory over archrival Ohio State (March 21) in the latest installment of the men's gymnastics blog. In Columbus, Catrambone helped the Maize and Blue secure the win with a season-high 14.800 on the still rings. After missing sometime due to injury, the New Jersey native took home the high bar crown (14.550) and the Newt Loken Award for his outstanding performance against UIC (Feb. 7) in his first meet of the 2009 campaign.
We are coming back from an amazing win this past weekend. We went to Columbus to compete against our biggest rival, Ohio State. We hadn't won at their home since 1977 and we all knew that it was going to be another tough task.
The coaches sat us down in their hotel room just before we left for the competition and told us some key points to remember before we went out there. They took a slightly different approach to the competition than we usually do. They told us to stay relaxed, be confident, and don't hold anything back and see what happens from there. The coaches told us to have fun and enjoy ourselves out there and that we would probably have our best performance if we did just that.
We started on pommels and redshirt freshman Devan Cote did an amazing routine to start us off on the right foot. After his solid routine, we had five outstanding performances to follow up on the apparatus. With six solid hit routines on the pommels, we had a season high of 59.300 on that event.
We then went to floor and you could just tell that everyone felt so relaxed and was having a good time out there. Sophomore Thomas Kelley highlighted our floor lineup with a score of 15.200 for a season best and took the title for the night. Even though he started the season a bit rough on floor, he now looks even more solid than he did last year when he won the Big Ten floor title. Another standout on floor was senior Scott Bregman, who upgraded his routine this week and showed great promise. He added a new tumbling pass to his routine, which is a front layout punch double front. He was struggling with that pass in practice but showed himself and the team that he is a great competitor.
Our team kept the confidence up as we went to vault and also notched a season best of 62.600. Junior co-captain David Chan and senior Ralph Rosso led the way on this event with two of the biggest vaults that people are performing in our country today! It was great to see that our vault team is coming around very nicely and is peaking at the right time. We started a bit slow on vault this season, but everyone kept pushing one another each day. We are finally starting to contest our vaults with the top teams.
The rings have been a steady and solid event for us all year, and we knew nothing would change. I started us off with a clean and easy routine and the next four guys showed everyone why we are probably the strongest team out there. Senior Phil Goldberg earned the highest ring score for Michigan by demonstrating why he was an All-American on that event a year ago. He holds his positions for longer than he has to and shows amazing strength throughout the routine. Even though we still have room to improve on this event, we are extremely close to blowing the roof off at Big Tens and NCAAs.
We continued the momentum on high bar. This has been another event that has given us problems in competitions this year. Last weekend against Illinois, we should have won the competition, but the last four high bar guys for Michigan either fell or had a major break in their routine to lose Senior Night to the Illini. We weren't going to let that happen again. Once again, Devan started us off with another fantastic routine, scoring a career high of 14.600 and helping the team to another season-high event score of 58.650. Sophomore Ben Baldus-Strauss upgraded his routine with another release to show that we weren't holding anything back. Even though Thomas had an uncharacteristic mistake as our anchor, we know that next week at Big Tens we are all going to come out on fire and nail our routines.
We closed the competition on parallel bars. Junior Mel Santander has struggled this season on this event but was not going to let that shake his confidence. He rocked his routine and got the team back on track after two missed sets with the usual hits that we all are used to. Also, Ralph and Chris did nicely-done routines to finish the convincing win of 357.600 to 349.700 over the Buckeyes.
Overall, it was an amazing feeling to go out there and do the routines that we all know we are capable of. Out of my four years competing for Michigan, this was by far one of the most exciting meets. After the meet, we all circled around the floor, with seniors in the middle of the circle and the rest of the team around us, singing the Victors -- it was just an outstanding feeling to experience. Knowing that we hit a season-high team score while also knowing that we still had some falls and mistakes was awesome. We know that we are going to peak at the exact time that we need to -- Big Tens. Having the crowd behind us, having the team support one another, and knowing what we are capable of doing will help us a tremendous amount during our preparation time.
We are all very excited to be competing at home next weekend and we would all love for everyone who can make it to come out and support the Michigan men's gymnastics team at Crisler Arena on Friday, April 3, at 7 p.m. Hope to see you all there!!
Additional Notes: Freshman Syque Caesar and senior Jamie Thompson are coming back extremely well from injuries and are starting to do gymnastics again. Look to see them make a push for Big Tens and NCAAs!!!
Players Mentioned
