MINNESOTA CLAIMS THREE ALL-STAR TITLES

April 13, 2024

The 2024 GymACT All Star Meet was an amazing experience for 11 of our Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics Team Members this past weekend. The top 5 gymnasts on each event from the East & the West Conferences descended on the Albuquerque Convention Center for another epic battle. 

The All Stars were selected based on a video submission process that took place over a 6 week period during the season. Minnesota occupied 26 of the 30 competition slots for the East, showing the dominance we have in the Eastern Conference. 

The competition was filled with exciting moments of high level gymnastics from start to end. Both conference teams competed head to head on all 6 events, starting on Floor Exercise. Jack Gagamov, Joey Pennell, Kellen Ryan, Henry Counts, and Charlie Larson put up some great routines that put lots of pressure on the West, who also had some solid performers on this event. After the first event, the West had a 0.1 point lead going into Pommel Horse. Charlie Larson wowed the crowd when he mounted with a triple twisting double layout for a mount and a double twisting double layout for a dismount!!!! Amazing stuff that earned him the Silver Medal with a score of. 

This meet was in conjunction with the largest college gymnastics competition on the face of the planet. Over 1500 college gymnasts competed in various categories at the NAIGC National Championships. This is the second d year that GymACT has partnered with NAIGC to run our annual East vs. West All Star meet and the future looks bright to continue this partnership. 

Pommel horse was a rough event for the East squad and we fell behind the West by almost four points. The bright spot for the East was Kellen Ryan posted the highest score on the event (12.9) to win the Gold Medal! 

The West continued to widen the gap on Still
Rings with some great performances while the East struggled and had to count one missed routine. At the halfway point of the meet, the West had a commanding of 6.90 points. 

The second half of the meet was a completely different story as the East picked up the lace considerably on the first event of the second half - Vault! We started out with Nate Davies of Temple setting the tone as the first man up, hitting a great vault and scoring a 13.60. The next 4 All Stars on vault hailed from the Minnesota team and they proceeded to put on a vaulting clinic and picked up 2.45 points on the West. David Grossman and Kellen Ryan tied with identical 14.35. Charlie Larson posted a big score of 14.75 after freshman Ben Letvin stuck his vault cold and posted the highest score of the meet - on ANY event of the entire meet - with a 15.00!!

Going into Parallel Bars we had reduced the deficit and only trailed the West by 4.45 points. Jack Gagamov started us off with a great set capped off with a stuck dismount for a 13.3 so the East was letting everyone know we weren’t done yet!! It turns out Jack’s score was the highest on PB’s for the East and the east was able to pick up an additional 2.05 points, further reducing the deficit down to only 2.4 points. 

Going into High Bar we knew we needed a tall order to make up the 2.4 points, but try we must!!! Each team fought through all their routines and at the end, after the smoke cleared, East was able to win the event by only a slight margin - 52.30 for East & 52.15 for the West. 

It was an epic battle indeed and the rough day we had on Pommel Horse proved to be the deciding event as the 3.75 point differential was just too much to make up over the next four events - but try they did and they almost pulled it off!  

The final score was:

  1. West 315.10

  2. East. 312.85

Congratulations to all the gymnasts from both the East & West Conferences. The top 3 individuals on each event were as follows:

Floor Exercise

  1. Jackson Harrison - West, 13.85

  2. Charlie Larson - East, 13.45

  3.  Xander Agate - West, 13.25

Pommel Horse

  1. Kellen Ryan - East, 12.9

  2. Mark Davis - West, 12.8

  3. Justin Smith - West. 12.7

Still Rings

  1. Nicky Franz - West, 14.2

  2. Ethan DiGerolamo - West, 14.05

  3. Zachary Murray - West, 13.75

Vault

  1. Ben Letvin - East, 15.00

  2. Charlie Larson - East, 14.75

  3. David Grossman & Kellen Ryan - East, 14.35

Parallel Bars 

  1. Hunter Flechsig - West, 13.45

  2. Jack Gagamov - East, 13.3

  3. Kellen Ryan - East, 13.0

High Bar

  1. Jack Gagamov - East, 13.8

  2. Elliot Foster - West, 13.35

  3. Hunter Flechsig - West, 13.20

While there was no real All-Around competition at this meet, Kellen Ryan did qualify on all 6 events and posted an unofficial All-Around score of 79.45. Congratulations to all the athletes competed at the All-Star competition in Albuquerque this past weekend.

Our next competition will be in Cleveland, Ohio at the GymACT Eastern Conference championships in conjunction with the USAG JD Eastern Nationals. Should be a great competition with all the teams from the East battling it out for the Conference team title. It will also be our qualification meet for the GymACT nationals to be held in Daytona Beach the second weekend of May.