OCR Text |
Show i (Future bright for lie gymnasts Mequon, Wisconsin stated that concentration plays the greatest role in doing well in gymnastics, once you are in shape. Judd described de-scribed aptly what gymnastics meant to him, when he stated that "It's more than just a sport. It actually act-ually becomes part of your life." Judging from the team's growing grow-ing strength and the recent wins it has acquired, apparently every member feels the same way Judd' does. BY JEFF SMITH Sports Writer Even though this year's gymnastics gym-nastics team is probably the smallest small-est and youngest in Utah history, it may be the best. Composed of four juniors and four freshmen, the squad has considerable experience, exper-ience, which has earned it a 5 -4 record so far this year. Six events make up the gymnastics gymnas-tics program: floor exercise, side horse, still rings, long horse, parallel paral-lel bars, and high bar. Another event, the all-around, is computed by-taking the average a gymnast scored on all six of the individual tests. A panel of four judges score the gymnasts, basing the scores of their point total on difficulty of the event being exercised or exercise exer-cise being performed, form, and the presentation of the exercise. The contestants can score from one to ten on their events, with the highest and lowest scores being discarded, and the score is the average of the middle two. The all-around is the total of the averages earned on the six single ,j events. In dual meets, each team is allowed al-lowed to enter four competitors in each event, two specialists and two all-around performers. Head Coach Larry Anderson commented that even though the Ute gymnastic program had moved ahead, so had all the rest of the Western Athletic Conference. Con-ference. Coach Anderson also pointed out that he felt the gymnasts still had not reached their potential, and were lacking in compolsories, (certain exercises required on each apparatus). Assisting Coach Anderson are Mike Kimball and Harold Frey. Kimball was an outstanding gymnast for the Redskins the last four years, and has placed high in national competition. Frey is on sabatical leave from the University of California at Berkley, where he was the Bears' gymnastics coach. Coach Frey said that because the sport didn't exist on the high school level in Utah, that all recruiting re-cruiting had to be done out of state, with a few exceptions. Because Be-cause of the small amount of interest in the sport, there was no official training for judges, who have to make their decisions in 1 5 seconds, Coach Frey helped organize or-ganize the Utah Officials Association Associ-ation to end this problem. The top gymnast for the Utes this year is an Ecuadoran, Sergio Luna, who competes in the all-around all-around and finished fourth in the WAC championships last year. Luna came to Utah after the former for-mer Utah gymnast coach Johnson met him while on a job for the state department, helping the Ecuador nation gymnast team get ready for a multi-national meet between other South American countries. Luna is in his third year of ; gymnastics competition and commented com-mented that the hardest adjustment adjust-ment since he began competing for the Redskins has been gaining enough stamina for competition in the all-around. Ken Wright, Roger Halderman, and Brian Taylor are the only local lo-cal students on the team. Wright, a junior and captain of the team, went to Skyline High School, and worked out on his own before coming to the University. Univer-sity. Wright stated that the side horse was definitely the hardest piece of equipment to perform on. Taylor, who is the biggest man on the squad, commented that because be-cause of his height, which is 6'1", he has trouble doing the high bar and rings. Taylor competed on the trampoline last year, but the event was cancelled this season. It has taken over a year for Taylor to adjust to the long horse and the parallel bars, his specialties this year. Halderman, considered by Coach Anderson as the best freshman fresh-man prospect ever at Utah, graduated grad-uated from South High, and in the last meet took second place in the all-around behind Luna. Mike Judd, a freshman from |