On Senior Night, the performance of two sophomores led the way for the Hawkeye men’s gymnastics team.
Matt McGrath and Anton Gryshayev set school records on the floor exercise and rings, respectively, and the No. 10 Hawkeyes defeated No. 8 Nebraska, 348.100-342.700, on Feb. 19 in the Field House.
Head coach JD Reive was ecstatic about his team’s performance, especially after a lackluster meet against Minnesota on Feb. 11.
“That was everything that I could have asked for in terms of hit ratio and their actually going out and having a good time with what they are doing,” he said. “It’s what I’ve been preaching to them that they need to do, and for them, this is a huge breakthrough to actually go out there and do it, and believe in it, and trust in it.”
The Hawkeyes won or shared five of six events, with pommel horse the only event won outright by the Cornhuskers. The 348.100 score was easily Iowa’s best of the season, besting the previous high by six points.
McGrath scored a 15.500 on floor exercise, which broke the previous school mark of 15.450 set in 2009 by Geoff Reins. McGrath said he didn’t believe his routine would score as high as it did.
“It felt pretty good,” he said. “Honestly, I still think the score was a little bit high, but I came out and did what I had to do for the team.”
He also said it was satisfying to see such high performances after a great week of practice.
“We got in the gym after the last meet and worked our butts off as hard as we ever had, and it’s great to see the results,” he said.
The other individual record broken came from a Hawkeye who has become accustomed to toppling records on the rings. Gryshayev scored a 15.200, breaking his own mark set at Illinois earlier this season. He now owns the top three spots in the Hawkeye record book on rings in the open-ended scoring system, which has been in place since 2008. Gryshayev, much like McGrath, didn’t think he broken the rings record again.
“I had a couple mistakes here and there, but you never know,” the sophomore said.
Gryshayev also claimed victory on the vault with a 15.700, tied with Nebraska’s Wyatt Baier. The Hawkeyes picked up victories from Samuel Wright on the horizontal bar and Broderick Shemansky on the parallel bars. Iowa’s team score of 57.700 on the parallel bars was also a school record, breaking the 57.050 mark set against Oklahoma in 2008.
The Hawkeyes will take a two-week break from competition before finishing the regular season with three meets away from Iowa City, including rematches with Minnesota and Nebraska. After turning in the best performance of the season, Reive wants the Hawks to use their performance against the Cornhuskers as a springboard.
“We did a lot of work this week, and it all paid off tonight, and they really saw that,” he said. “So now, this meet is momentum to keep moving forward.”
