The NCAA News - News and Features

March 30, 1998

National Collegiate Men's Gymnastics

California hopes for repeat victory

Event: 1998 National Collegiate Men's Gymnastics Championships.

Overview: California will look to repeat as champion this year. Leading the way for the Golden Bears will be Evgenii Zherebchevskiy. Backing up Zherebchevskiy are teammates Josh Brickelbaw and Oleg Kosiak .... No. 1-ranked Nebraska will be looking for a team championship with a seven-man roster. At the forefront of Nebraska's effort will be all-arounders Derek Leiter, Bill Mulholland and freshman Jason Hardabura, along with last year's parallel bars and horizontal bar champion, Marshall Nelson .... Iowa, the No. 2-ranked team in the nation, will be looking for its second championship and first since 1969. Guiding the Hawkeyes in their quest are all-arounders Todd Strada and Chris Camiscioli, with floor exercise specialist Brian Hamilton .... Ohio State will also present strong competition for the title with Michael Morgan, ranked first in the nation on the floor exercise; Jamie Natalie, ranked in the top 10 of four events; and Doug Stibel .... Michigan will compete for honors with all-arounder Kevin Roulston, whose strength is on the floor exercise, and all-arounder La Lo Haro, who will contend for the parallel bars individual title .... 1997 second-place finisher Oklahoma is ranked third in its region and has the No. 1-ranked still ring performer, Dan Fink. Teammates Andy Howard, Brendan O'Neil, Robby Rome and Todd Bishop, who is ranked in the top three nationally in the parallel bars, pommel horse and horizontal bar, will contribute to Oklahoma's effort .... Illinois' Travis Romagnoli, who tied for third in last year's all-around championship, will vie for the individual title with his top-ranked regional qualifying average. Kendall Schiess of New Mexico will strive for the pommel horse crown after posting a second-place finish in 1997.

Field: Three teams advance from each of two regionals. Also advancing will be the top three all-around competitors who are not on one of the qualifying teams and the top three individuals in each event not already qualified on a team or as an all-around competitor.

Dates and sites: Regional competition is April 4 at Massachusetts (East) and Oklahoma (West). The championships will be April 16-18 at Penn State.

Television coverage: The championships will be televised tape-delayed by ESPN at 12:30 a.m. (Eastern time) April 22.

Information/results: The fax-on-demand telephone number is 770/399-3060 (passcode 1915); request numbers are 1395 for dates and sites, 1396 for bracket/schedule, 5112 for qualifiers, 5113 for preliminary and all-around final results, 5114 for team final results and 5115 for individual-event final results. Championship results also will be available on the World Wide Web at www.ncaa.org. Results will be published in the April 27 issue of The NCAA News.