ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Competing in its home gym for the first time in over a month, the No. 9 Navy men's gymnastics team was firing on all cylinders on Sunday afternoon with a wire-to-wire win over No. 12 William & Mary. The Mids (4-1) outscored the Tribe (1-6) by 2.5 or more points on three events to help the squad pull away by a final score of 393.1 to 379.7 at the Halsey Field House Gymnastics Facility.  
 
Navy received strong individual efforts from across its roster as six different gymnasts grabbed first-place results over William & Mary opponents. Ian Dinmore (Jr., Odenton, Md.) claimed first place on the floor exercise with a score of 13.55, while Ronan McQuillan (Jr., Katy, Texas) did the same on the pommel horse courtesy of a 13.9. Erik Engelke (Jr., Henrico, Va.) and Connor Van Loo (Sr., Freeland, Mich.) earned top honors on the rings and vault with respect scores of 13.1 and 14.7. The final two individual winners on Sunday were Isaiah Drake (So., Los Angeles, Calif.) on the parallel bars with a 13.95 result and Matthew Petros (Fr., Broadview Heights, Ohio) on the high bar with a dominant 13.2 score.
 
As a team, Navy registered 65.5 points on the floor exercise, 61.85 on the pommel horse, 63.0 on the rings, 71.15 on the vault, 66.9 on the parallel bars and 64.7 on the high bar. All six totals surpassed William & Mary's respective aggregates.
 
"Coming off of two weeks of training without a competition last weekend, I feel we're heading in the right direction," remarked head coach Kip Simons. "We're working on upgrading our routines and you saw some of those today. We also had some new performers out there so that was good to get them some additional experience. That's important for our depth in all of our events. I was proud of the guys today from start to finish. We hit 28 of our 30 routines. We're ramping it up with competitions each of the next five weeks. Our focus is squarely on preparing for the postseason. Today was a very positive step."
 
The Mids' competition began with a sweep of the top-three positions on the floor exercise. Dinmore turned in his first career victory with a personal-best 13.55 score that cleared the field by 0.25 points. Van Loo provided Dinmore with strong back-up with a 13.3 score on Sunday. Another career-best result, this time by Matthew Rosendahl (Upperco, Md.) rounded out the top of the leaderboard as the junior posted a 13.2 score.
 
The pommel horse competition was extremely close between the two programs with just a 0.8-point edge for the Mids and the top-five illustrated that with three William & Mary gymnasts and two from Navy. Luckily for the Mids, their two gymnasts went one-two led by McQuillan's dominant 1.1-point margin of victory with a career-best 13.9 performance. Danilo Viciana (Fr., Marietta, Ga.) came in behind McQuillan with a 12.8 effort.
 
The rings competition mirrored the floor exercise as Navy occupied the top-three spots. Engelke spearheaded the Mids' rings showing with a first-place score of 13.1 to barely hold off his teammate, Viciana by 0.05 points (13.05). Sabastian Gordon (So., Old Tappan, N.J.) completed the sweep with a 12.7 result.
 
Navy broke open the meet on the fourth rotation with five hits on five vaults. Van Loo and Drake bolstered the Mids' cause with respective scores of 14.7 and 14.65 to go one-two on Sunday afternoon. Van Loo's score was the second-best in his decorated career as he challenged his 14.75 effort from the 2020 Navy Open. The duo of Petros and Giovanni Gambatese (Sr., Pewaukee, Wisc.) grabbed the next two spots on the leaderboard with scores of 14.2 and 13.85, respectively. Rosendahl nearly made it a solid sweep of the top-five as he came in sixth at 13.75.
 
Another strong rotation was turned in by the Mids on the next event, the parallel bars, as all five Navy participants finished in the top-six. Drake earned the best finish on the apparatus with a score of 13.95 to hold of William & Mary's Aidan Cuy (13.8). The underclass duo of Petros and Vishal Mandava (So., Cypress, Texas) went back-to-back in third and fourth place with 13.45 and 13.35 scores, respectively. Gambatese earned his second top-five result in as many events as he posted a 13.15 score, good for fifth overall. Viciana concluded Navy's effort on the p-bars with a 13.0 mark to finish sixth.
 
In control of the meet, the Mids sealed their victory with 2.55-point advantage over the Tribe on the high bar. Competing on the high bar in collegiate action for just the second time in his career, Petros nailed his 4.4-point routine and was rewarded with a 9.2-point execution score for a 13.6 total score that bested his teammate Gambatese by 0.4 points (13.2). Drake rounded out his strong individual performance with a fourth-place score of 12.75.
 
"Isaiah Drake did a great job this afternoon," commented Simons. "Matthew Rosendahl is someone that has worked and worked and worked since his plebe year to get into the lineup and now as a junior, he's starting to have a real impact on the floor and vault for us. I was really pleased with Matthew's performance today."
 
Navy will back in action at Halsey Field House next Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. against a star-studded pair of opponents in No. 2 Stanford and No. 8 Air Force.