By JACK ROSSI
IOWA CITY, Iowa — Though it is considered the offseason for college gymnasts, the summer of 2014 has been keeping the University of Iowa men’s gymnastics team busy. When student-athletes aren’t in the UI Fieldhouse honing their skills in Iowa City, they are out competing all over the world representing Hawkeye nation.
“Summer is important to what we’re doing,” said UI head coach JD Reive. “The fact that there are competitions and the kids are wanting to get involved in them is going to keep moving us in the direction we need to be going.”
Freshman Cory Paterson started the summer off right at the 2014 Canadian Gymnastics Championships in May. Reive was in attendance to see Paterson put on one of the strongest performances Reive has seen.
Paterson won the high bar event with a score of 13.850 and was crowned the Canadian national champion for the event. He also made a run at the all-around title with a score of 79.800, which put him fifth place overall. Robert Watson of British Columbia, Canada, took first in all-around.
Paterson, a high bar specialist for the Hawkeyes, has not worked as much on other events since arriving at Iowa. Reive sees his all-around success at the Canadian Gymnastics Championships as a benchmark for the future of the Iowa men’s gymnastics program. The highly-touted recruit let the coaches ease his transition into the collegiate level, but now Paterson is progressing in multiple events following his first year at Iowa.
“This was a huge transition,” Reive said. “If you could take a career path and change it in one week, we did it (with his all-around result).
“He competed in high bar and that was just a freshman transition as he was trying to understand what it takes to improve at our level. This was the proof; he did the work and got the results. You could see the shift in his eyes. For him, he now starts to see that we train correctly.”
As the team tries to fill the events of departing seniors Matt McGrath and Angelo Bronzino, Reive believes Paterson is capable to take on a bigger role to fill that gap in his second season.
“I expect to see a lot more out of him next year,” Reive said. “I would have expected more even if he did not have that success at Canadian Nationals.”
Paterson is not the only gymnast in action this summer. Sophomore Jack Boyle, redshirt junior Lance Alberhasky, redshirt sophomore Cyrus Dobre-Mofid and sophomore Matt Loochtan will all be competing in the U.S. qualifiers in mid-July and will look for a spot at the P&G Championships in August.
Internationally, junior William Albert is slated to travel to Glasgow, Scotland, for the Commonwealth Games, which take place July 24-Aug. 1
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