Navy Aims For All-Academy Championship on Sunday

The Midshipmen own the highest team average among the service academy field with 335.687 points

	Adam Stanton ranks 10th nationally on the pommel horse this winter

Feb. 15, 2008

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - The Navy gymnastics team, fresh off its most impressive performance of the year to beat Army last week, will head to Laguna Beach, Calif., for the All-Academy Championship, starting at 7 p.m. PST (10 p.m. EST).

The Midshipmen (6-3) will be looking to defeat service academy foes Air Force (2-4) and Army (2-5) to claim their first All-Academy Championship title since the event was created in 2000. Army has come away with each of the last-seven titles, prior to which Air Force won the inaugural championship. Navy's previous best effort came in 2006, where it fell just 0.05-point off the first-place score from Army.

Navy heads to the West Coast having defeated Army in convincing fashion last Saturday in Annapolis to claim the N-Star. The Midshipmen won in all-six disciplines and boasted the highest individual score in five events to soundly defeat the Black Knights, 340.75-322.6. The two teams also met one month ago in the West Point Open, where Navy opened its season with a 332.85-point performance to finish 2.15 points ahead of host Army.

Meanwhile, Navy and Air Force will be meeting one another for the only time during the regular season this Sunday. Air Force and Army met on one prior occasion this winter in West Point, as the Falcons came away with a narrow 331.35-331.3 victory over their hosts.

Navy comes into the week ranked 11th nationally with a team average of 335.687 points, 4.02 points higher than 14th-ranked Army and 6.762 points more than 16th-ranked Air Force. The Midshipmen own a higher average than their fellow service academies on the floor exercise (56.912 points, 11th nationally), vault (60.025 points, 13th nationally) and high bar (55.837 points, eighth nationally).

Individually, Navy's Brandon Cook ranks among the ECAC's top-two gymnasts in two different events. Cook owns the nation's 11th-best average and the conference's top mark on the floor exercise with a 14.912. On the vault, he ranks second in the ECAC with an average of 15.43 points. He has scored higher than a 15.0 all-five times he's competed on the vault and twice on the floor exercise.

Navy's highest individual national ranking comes on the pommel horse, where Adam Stanton (Jr./Centennial, Colo.) owns the country's 10th-best average score of 14.13. Last week against Army, Stanton delivered an outstanding 14.5-point routine on the apparatus to win the event for the third time in 2008.

Dylan Parrott (Fr./Rockwell, N.C.) continued his stellar start to his collegiate career last week and ranks 19th nationally in the all-around. The Navy rookie won the all-around with an 84.55 against Army, scoring a 14.0 or higher in five of the six events. For his efforts, he was recognized as the USAG Collegiate Division National Gymnast of the Week and ECAC Rookie of the Week.

Fellow all-around gymnast Christopher Tam (Sr./Draper, Utah) also shared the spotlight this week with Parrott, as he was distinguished as the ECAC Gymnast of the Week. Tam, the conference's eighth-best gymnast in the all-around and fifth-highest scorer on the high bar, racked up 84.25 points in the all-around against Army to place second.

Following this weekend's action, the Midshipmen will return to action on Feb. 29, when they play host to William & Mary in Macdonough Hall at 7 p.m.