March 8, 2015 WILLIAMSBURG, Va. - The 13th-ranked Navy men's gymnastics team fell on the road at No. 15 William & Mary on Sunday by a final score of 410.9 to 407.6. The Mids had strong results of 70.0-plus points in their rotations of rings, floor exercise and vault, but a subpar showing on the pommel horse doomed the team versus their ECAC foe in the meet at William & Mary's Kaplan Arena.
Jonny Tang (So., Malvern, Pa.), Joshua Steves (Sr., Houston, Texas) and Thomas Goodell (Sr., Hopkinton, Mass.) led Navy's charge on Sunday as all three Midshipmen earned first place results. Tang was the top finisher in both the floor exercise and all-around competitions, while Steves and Goodell finished first on the rings and parallel bars, respectively.
Tang led a strong effort by the Mids in the floor exercise as he won the event with a score of 14.65. A 14.3 by Mitchell Larios (Jr., Frisco, Texas) and a 14.0 by Eric Viscardi (Sr., Marietta, Ga.) gave Navy three of the top four results during the floor exercise rotation.
Steves fronted a sweep of the top three spots on the rings by Navy on Sunday as he tied his career-high with a score of 15.2. Viscardi came in runner-up with a career-high result of 14.8. Goodell was the third Midshipmen to finish ahead of a Tribe gymnast as he scored a 14.15 for his routine on the rings.
Goodell earned Navy's third individual event win as he claimed a narrow 0.2-point victory over William & Mary's Rob Meyer on the parallel bars by a score of 14.2 to 14.0. A pair of Mids, Tang and David Frick (Jr., St. Johns, Fla.) tied for third place on the parallel bars as the duo recorded identical scores of 13.8. That mark was a career-high for Frick, whose previous high score was a 13.6 earlier this season at the West Point Open.
On the way to his all-around win, Tang finished a team-high second on the high bar at 14.15. He rounded out his all-around competition with a 12.2 on the pommel horse, a 13.5 on the rings and a 14.1 on the vault for a grand total of 82.4. He defeated William & Mary's Aria Sabbagh by 2.1 points.
Navy's top scorer on the vault was Larios, who recorded a result of 14.6 to finish in third place, just 0.05 points shy of Nick Van Dyke's second place total. Neal Courter finished first at 14.8.
In pommel horse action, Connor Westrick (Jr., Waterford, Wis.) was the top finisher for Navy with a sixth place score of 12.65. The Tribe's Peter Ten Eyck finished first at 14.4
As a team, the Mids recorded a score of 70.5 in the floor exercise, 59.8 on the pommel horse, 71.45 on the rings, 70.0 on the vault, 67.9 on the parallel bars and 67.95 on the high bar.
Navy will next be action on the road at Springfield College on Saturday, March 14. In both teams' final regular season meet before postseason competition, the Mids and Pride will face off beginning at 1 p.m.
