UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Competing in its seventh consecutive NCAA Championship, the Navy gymnastics team turned in a solid result in Friday afternoon's NCAA Qualifying Meet at Penn State University. The ninth-seeded Mids were led by seven individual gymnasts qualifying for Saturday's NCAA Championship Finals in the action at Rec Hall. Competing in the first session of the qualifying meet against No. 1 Stanford, No. 4 Illinois, No. 5 Nebraska, No. 8 Air Force and No. 12 Army, Navy posted a team score of 392.491 to rank fifth in the field.
The final standings from the first session saw the seeding hold true as the Cardinal turned a dominant score of 421.888 to place first in the group. Nebraska and Illinois garnered the final two team qualifying positions in Saturday's Championship Finals with respective scores of 410.124 and 405.524. Air Force held off Navy and came in fourth with a 399.222 effort. Army rounded out the field of six in the afternoon session with a 384.523 result.
When combined with the scores from the evening session, Navy finished ranked 10th overall. The final leaderboard for session two saw Oklahoma (415.491), Penn State (415.290) and Michigan (413.992) advance to Saturday's team championship. The rest of the second session saw Ohio State rank fourth with a 404.492 score ahead of California and Springfield, who posted scores of 395.055 and 381.324, respectively.
As a team, Navy scored 67.266 points on the floor exercise, 62.399 on the pommel horse, 65.233 on the rings, 69.030 on the vault, 66.198 on the parallel bars and 62.365 on the high bar.
"Today was a day of highs and lows," remarked head coach Kip Simons. "You hope to have a performance like you've practiced all year for with no surprises, but today we were quite inconsistent with some really good routines out there, but also way too many misses."
Navy's competition began on the pommel horse on Friday afternoon. The junior duo of
Ronan McQuillan (Katy, Texas) and
Syam Buradagunta (Westborough, Mass.) led the Mids' effort as both placed in the top-20 in the field of 37. McQuillan posted a score of 12.9 to rank 16th, while Buradagunta netted 12.6 points for his routine. McQuillan finished 0.3 points shy of the third and final advancement position for tomorrow night's event finals.
The Mids' rings lineup was consistent and tightly packed on the leaderboard with four of their five gymnasts placing between 19th and 22nd.
Isaiah Drake (So., Los Angeles, Calif.) was the one outlier as he turned a team-best score of 13.6 that was good for 11th overall.
Erik Engelke (Jr., Henrico, Va.) was the second Navy gymnast in the standings as he tied for 19th place with a 13.033 score in his first-ever NCAA Championship appearance. The underclass trio of
Riley Rose (So., Las Vegas, Nev.),
Danilo Viciana (Fr., Marietta, Ga.) and
Sabastian Gordon (So., Old Tappan, N.J.) also were appearing for the first time in their young careers on the national stage and posted scores of 13.0, 12.8 and 12.8 to finish 21st and tied for 22nd, respectively.
A pillar of the Navy vaulting lineup throughout his four year career with the Midshipmen,
Connor Van Loo (Sr., Freeland, Mich.) made sure his collegiate career would be extended one more day as he nailed his 4.9-level vault with a 9.666 execution score for an overall mark of 14.566 that tied for fifth in the field. Competing in his final collegiate meet, team captain
Giovanni Gambatese (Sr., Pewaukee, Wisc.) challenged for one of the three individual advancement spots for gymnasts from qualifying teams, but came up just 0.167 points short with a final score of 14.066.
Similar to the rings, the parallel bars saw Navy's youth champion the team's cause as Drake and a trio of first-timers,
William Champagne (So., Douglas, Mass.),
Matthew Petros (Fr., Broadview Heights, Ohio) and
Vishal Mandava (So., Cypress, Texas) all finished in the top-20. Drake led the way with a 13.733 score that tied for 12th place. Just 0.133 points back, Champagne tied for 14th place and snagged one of the qualifying spots for Saturday's finals. Petros nearly grabbed the third spot, but lost in a tie-breaker to Army's Joseph Buselmeier as the pair tied for 16th place with matching 13.466's. Buselmeier advanced over Petros due to coming in with a higher national qualifying scoring average. Mandava kept the streak of high scores rolling in as he netted the Mids 13.333 points as he finished in 20th place.
The duo of Drake and
Caleb Hickey (Jr., Carthage, N.C.) spotlighted Navy's effort on the high bar as Drake finished in a five-way tie for 12th place with a 13.3 score. Hickey nearly joined that grouping as he was 0.067 points back with a 13.233 to rank 17th overall.
Strong until the end, the Mids rounded out their day on the floor exercise with three top-15 results and all three qualifying spots in Saturday night's finals. Buradagunta was way up the leaderboard and finished fifth overall with a 14.2 score that was just 0.066 out of second place. First-time NCAA competitors,
Matthew Rosendahl (Jr., Upperco, Md.) and
Ian Dinmore (Jr., Odenton, Md.) provided strong back-up for Buradagunta performance with respective scores of 13.733 and 13.633 to rank 12th and 15th overall.
As part of his all-around performance that ranked third overall, Drake recorded a 13.0 on the floor exercise, a 12.166 on the pommel horse, a 13.6 on the rings, a 12.866 on the vault, a 13.733 on the parallel bars and a 13.3 on the high bar for a cumulative score of 78.665.
"Isaiah qualifying as an all-arounder was great to see," said Simons in closing. "He has a really solid chance to finish in the top-10 tomorrow night. We expect him to have a new life tomorrow with a clean slate. He'll need to go six-for-six to have a chance. The floor lineup was impressive this afternoon. It was great to see some of the new faces of the program out there; guys that work day-in and day-out and just grind like Dinmore and Rosendahl. We kind of expect Syam to be near the top. To see newcomers to this NCAA Championship scene succeed was refreshing for me. We saw the high level execution from Connor on the vault that we've grown to see over his four years in that event. On parallel bars, to see Will, another new face, break through and qualify for tomorrow is a testament to how hard he's worked, but also how deep we are; he really had to fight to break into that lineup and then to perform the way he did today was great. Caleb has battled a lot of injuries throughout this season, especially later in the year, but he keeps just finding a way to get the job done. I'm proud of him for being in a position to fight for an All-American spot tomorrow night.
"If you look at the body of the work for this season it was a win, but I feel like we came up short today. Hopefully that'll add a little bit of fuel to the fire as we head into the much needed offseason. We need to get healthy and take some time to debrief and look into where we made mistakes and how we get better for next year."
The NCAA Championship Finals are scheduled to begin at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday night at Penn State's Rec Hall. The seven-member of group of Buradagunta (FX), Champagne (PB), Dinmore (FX), Drake (AA), Hickey (HB), Rosendahl (FX) and Van Loo (VT) will be competing for the right to earn NCAA All-American status versus gymnasts from the six teams that qualified for the team finals, as well as select individual qualifiers. The action will be streamed live on NCAA.com.
