Men's Gymnastics Head Coach Lou Burkel On UCSB Invitational
3/11/2002 12:00:00 AM | Men's Gymnastics
March 11, 2002
The Air Force men's gymnastics team finished fourth (200.875) at the UC Santa Barbara Invitational Saturday. The Falcons finished behind Cal Berkleley (214.200), UCSB (208.025) and Temple (206.325. Washington finished fifth with a team score of 172.450).
Head Coach Lou Burkel: "We arrived on Friday for our Saturday competition and after a light workout we were able to attend the women's dual meet with UCSB on Friday night. Our Lady Falcons did a great job and won the meet easily."
"This was a good trip and an excellent competition, but our performance was a bit shaky. Fifth-ranked Cal Berkeley dominated the meet, but UCSB had their best meet ever and finished second with Temple University third, Air Force fourth and the University of Washington fifth. Our hit ratio dropped too, due primarily to a poor performance on parallel bars. A positive to the effort was that our misses were not as bad or as devastating to the team score as they can sometimes be. Dismounts were a problem and something that we will continue to work hard to improve. Also, we had some routines that were very well executed, but did not score as well as they should have. Since gymnastics is "judged", the scores are often not what the coaches think they should have been. We did have seven season-high scorers: James Hayes worked rings and all around for the first time since January and had season highs on rings, horizontal bar and all around, Matthew Kenkel on floor exercise and parallel bars, Patrick McAndrew on rings, and Aaron Jackson on horizontal bar."
"We wrap up regular season competition this week. The women are in Denver on Thursday and at home on Sunday and the men at the University of Nebraska on Friday. These meets will serve as the final tune-up before we host the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships on March 22-23. If you are nearby for any of those competitions, we would really appreciate your support! The MPSF Championships especially will be a great competition!"
