Tribe Kicks Off Season at Navy Open

W&M Finishes Second in Four-Team Field

01/26/08 9:00PM

Annapolis, Md. - The College of William and Mary opened head coach Cliff Gauthier’s 35th-season at the helm of the program with a solid second-place performance this afternoon at the Navy Open in Annapolis, Md.

The hosting Midshipmen took top honors at the meet by posting a team score of 336.90, while the College’s 333.10 team total easily outdistanced Springfield College’s third-place score of 321.40.

William and Mary literally re-wrote its record book on the afternoon, as the meet was the first the Tribe has competed under the new ‘open’ scoring system that the collegiate ranks have adopted for the 2008 season. Under the old system, a 10.0 was a perfect score, now competitors will routinely break the 10.0 barrier, and scores in the 14’s and 15’s will be-come commonplace. The change was made to reflect the scoring system that has been in place at the international level since the completion of the most recent Olympic games. As a frame of reference, the highest team score posted by a Di-vision I program this season (coming into Saturday’s action) was 356.40 (by top-ranked Penn State University). The College’s 333.10 total would have placed it as the 10th-best team score posted (through last weekend’s competitions). The highest individual score posted in the NCAA coming into this weekend’s action was a 16.55 (on a vault by Minne-sota’s Mitchell Mays) – an effort that would be generally considered as an internationally competitive mark. The next highest individual score among the other five events was 15.625 (on floor exercise).

Overall, Navy won five of the six events as a team, with the lone loss coming to the Tribe on the vault.

Individually, the College’s Derek Gygax (Stevenvill, Md.) was the squad’s top scorer on the afternoon, as he finished with a six-event total of 78.800, which placed him third overall. His highest finish on an individual event came with a strong third-place mark of 14.200 on the parallel bars. Tribe senior team tri-captain, Andrew Hunt (Upper Black Eddy, Pa.) got his final season off to a great start, as he posted the meet’s top score on both the parallel bars (14.950) and high bar (14.800). Fellow senior team tri-captain, David Locke (Natick, Mass.) also captured an individual event title, as he flew to a meet best 15.460 mark on the vault. Additionally, Locke placed second overall on the floor exercise (14.850) and third on the high bar (14.200). Junior Richard Pearson (Baton Rouge, La.) also found gold on the afternoon, as he swung to the meet’s top mark on the pommel horse (13.700).

The Tribe’s next action will come in two weeks when it will travel to Chicago, Ill. to compete in a dual meet with the University of Illinois-Chicago on Saturday, February 9th.