April 3, 2004

NCAA Men's Gymnastics Championships Quotes

Illinois Quotes:
Head Coach Yoshi Hayasaki:
Today was a different day from yesterday, our guys put up a fight, setting the school record. Penn St. had a great day, it was their day and we had a good day. I don't think we should be ashamed, with the way we competed and this score we put up today, we could've beat anyone in any other competition.

We posted good parallel bar and good high bar scores and still had two of our best events left. I felt we could pass the two teams ahead, but we weren't aware of where Penn St. was. We all felt good about the competition. I couldn't ask for more.

Justin Spring:
When you come off a high score like this at nationals, it's something to be proud of. Nationals are the pinnacle of the season. We knew whoever made the fewest mistakes was going to win and that's exactly what happened. We had our ups and downs and came back, but in the end we had a few falls and that did it, but all in all it was an overall strong performance. I was proud of us.

Ben Newman:
After the meet, just like I told Justin I was hungry and not physically. We tasted standing at the podium and had a strong team performance, we just fell a little short. We had a good meet. We had a good meet, it just wasn't what we wanted to do. We're happy about what we did this year and we're excited about next year.

Penn State quotes:
Head Coach Randy Jepson:
I told my guys all year, we could do this, looking at our talent and our schedule we were confident that we could do it, although we never really had our full team together until tonight. All year long we had some obstacles against us, international travels or injuries it was one thing or another. I told the guys that if there was one word that we were going to go by tonight, it would be relentless. We were relentless tonight and I couldn't be prouder of our guys.

About All-around champion Luis Vargas:
Luis has been up against the best gymnasts in the world. He's been to the Pan-Am Games, the World Championships and he competed in Germany. I've been to two major competitions with Luis and I knew that he takes it to another gear. The team first saw that tonight.

Duke had the best meet of his career tonight. It's what you expect from a senior captain.

Duke Van Vleet:
This one was a little sweeter than 2000. I had a little part of that one. I knew we were going to be better this year. I knew people were counting us out early, especially after seeing the coaches' poll. We used that as motivation all year and tonight was the icing on the cake. It's nice to come out and surprise people and show them we aren't going anywhere.