Career highs and a full team propel men’s gymnastics to victory over Cal

Feb. 13, 2021, 8:20 p.m.

Stanford men’s gymnastics (1-1, 1-0 MPSF) regrouped from its shorthanded performance on Wednesday to post a flurry of career highs and event titles in its second virtual meet of the season, defeating Bay Area rival No. 9 Cal (2-1, 0-1 MPSF) 394.350 – 380.200.

The Cardinal earned all six team event titles for the night.

Sophomore Riley Loos and freshman Brandon Nguyen came up big, earning several event titles and finishing 1-2 in the all-around competition with an 80.900 and a 78.750, respectively. 

Freshman Noah Newfield and junior Kyle Abe were the two representatives for the all-around for the Bears with scores of 76.050 and 70.050, respectively. 

In his first competition of the season, Loos claimed victories on still rings (13.450) — tying a career-best earned by junior Matthew Szot in this meet — and the floor exercise (13.800). Loos also netted a career-best with a 13.600 on the parallel bars.

Picking up another two event titles, Nguyen backed up his season debut with a career-best 14.800 on the vault — four-tenths shy of a perfect 10 in execution — and a 13.250 on the high bar.

Sophomore Zach Martin contributed a career-best on the high bar with a 12.350 to kick off the rotation for the Cardinal.

Sophomore J.R. Chou squeaked out the pommel horse event title (13.500) by five-hundredths of a point against Cal sophomore Will Lavanakul.

Senior Blake Sun excelled in one of his two specialties — the parallel bars — outscoring the rest of the competitors by 0.800 with a 14.400 and claiming a second-straight event title.

The Cardinal caps off its regular season against No. 10 Navy on Feb. 17.

Contact Jordan John Lee at jjslee22 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Jordan John Lee is a staff writer for the Sports section and occasionally writes for the News section of The Daily. Fresh off graduating with majors in Biology and Classics, he is a second-year master's student in Epidemiology and Clinical Research. From the 626, he has grown up watching his Los Angeles teams, the Dodgers and Lakers. His dream is to watch tennis at all four Grand Slam tournaments. Contact him at jjlee 'at' stanforddaily.com.

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