Representing USA at 2024 Masters Gymnastics World Cup: My Experience and Routines

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Robert

This year I had the honor of representing the USA at the 2024 Masters Gymnastics World Cup sanctioned by the NAIGC and hosted by the MIT Gymnastics Club. I had such a great time and made new friends from around the world.

Stefan and Robert

Stefan is a member of the Great Britain masters team. I also got a picture with Saul pictured below but somehow it got lost. Saul represented Australia in the competition.

Stefan and Saul

When I learned about the competition in February, I signed up for all 6 events. But I had some trouble with my wrists so I was not able to compete pommel horse. Horizontal Bar I had not competed since 2000, so I scrambled to get a routine together I would be safe doing. 🙂

See below for my routines. I represented the US team for the 40’s age group on Rings and Horizontal Bar.

Still Rings
Vault
Parallel Bars
Horizontal Bar
Floor Exercise

Next year, the 2025 Masters Gymnastics World Cup will be hosted by Germany. I’m thinking I should learn to speak some German before then. 🙂

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Competition is still thriving in 2020

Posted on December 12, 2020 by Robert

This year has been a challenging one for many people with a variety of reasons. Personally, my “work at home uninterrupted” time shrank to zero when all 6 of my kids began doing school at home. For the 5 teenagers I was mostly unaffected, but for my youngest who recently turned 8 I quickly learned that he would not be “in class” unless I was with him.

We have been working on finding balance and setting expectations so I can still work and he can get his class work done. There have been compromises but I’ve been learning how to teach 2nd grade math and reading. Most of the other material I’ve opted out of so I can have some time to work. During this time he watches clips from PBS kids on his school Chromebook.

Since the fall semester started I’ve been working with Virtual Stars and GymACT to enable live virtual competitions. These competitions have ranged from a simple back tuck contest to a pommel horse intersquad between non funded college men’s gymnastics teams.

After enabling a few of these competitions I was itching to get back in the gym. So I took my 8 year old son Willow and we began having weekly field trips to the gym.

Scott Barclay helping Willow do a handstand

Willow and I have both enjoyed getting out of the house and I had just enough time to pull together my floor routine in time for the annual Sun Devil Gymnastics ASU Intrasquad. As an Alumni I get to compete whatever I’m ready for, and this is something like my 15th ASU pre season competition so I’m glad I was able to compete.

Breeze Olsson and Kevin Riggle did a great job narrating the meet through zoom streaming to Facebook and there were over eleven hundred people who watched it live. I reviewed it today and they both did a great job engaging with the audience. My routine starts somewhere around an hour and 13 minutes into the live stream:

Below is a video of just my routine with no narration. 🙂

My contribution to the 2020 ASU Maroon Gold and Black Intrasquad
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Fun on Floor

Posted on December 15, 2019 by Robert

This year I finally got to the point where I could comfortably tumble without seeing stars on every pass. I began basic tumbling again about 5 years ago, but my last competition on that event was about 20 years ago. When I showed my coach Scott Barclay my floor routine last week (first time all together since college) he suggested we have some fun with it.

Scheming with Scott

Before my routine I told Scott which corner I was going to do my Y scale and he told me what to expect when I do it. 🙂

A couple weeks before the meet I hurt my hand trying the Flowrider for the first time on a boogie board. So when I got to the gym the week of the meet I tested each event and decided I would only do Floor and Vault. Since I’ve been training new dismounts on Parallel bars and Rings but not on a hard surface yet it’s probably just as well that I didn’t compete those events. I was encouraged by my scores, though – 11.45 on Floor and 11.2 on Vault.

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Recruited by the Gold Team

Posted on December 11, 2018 by Robert

This year at the annual Arizona State Men’s Gymnastics Intra Squad competition there were 3 teams again – Maroon, Gold, and Black.  I was planning on being with the black team again since my jersey is black but when I showed up Colton (the team captain for the Gold team) asked if I would be on the gold team because they had the least amount of people.  He also wanted my scores to count for their team. 🙂

The gold team started on Floor but I don’t have a routine together yet so I got to cheer on my teammates.  Then we went to Pommel Horse where I was eager to show off 2 new skills – a half savado mount and a handstand dismount.  The mount I had learned last year but wasn’t ready to put it into a routine until this year.  The dismount I’ve been working on for a few years now and finally did it for the first time a week before the competition.  Since the alternative was just a loop off the end which doesn’t even count as a dismount anymore (it did when I was in college which is why I never learned a handstand dismount back then) I decided to go for it.

I performed 2 new skills on pommel horse this year

After pommel horse we moved on to Rings which turned out very well for me.  I did not add any new skills this year but I’ve been working on my handstands recently which paid off as I improved my execution score and placed 7th overall with a 12.6.  

I placed 7th with this routine within the current 50+ member ASU team

Next we did vault.  While we were warming up one of my alumni friends came over dressed in a uniform and asked what event we were on.  Daniel Bronnenberg warmed up a bit with us but waited for the next rotation to compete on the vault.  It’s always good to see other alumni competing.  For my vault I tried using a “waterfall” start which I learned from one of my kids’ running coaches recently.  However my steps were off so I was just happy to do the vault safely.

Tried a new ‘waterfall’ start but I’m still working out the right distance

The last event (for me, I’m not ready for hi bar yet) was parallel bars.  I’ve been training a double pike dismount for about 6 months but I hadn’t done it on a hard surface yet (since college) so I opted for a layout to be safe.  

This was my ‘safe’ routine while I gain confidence with new skills

Overall I had a great time competing with the ASU team again and look forward to next year when I hope to place in the top 3 on at least one event.

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The bar has been raised in ASU Men’s Gymnastics!

Posted on December 11, 2017 by Robert

I had a great time competing with the Arizona State University Men’s Gymnastics team in the 2017 Maroon and Gold Intrasquad. That was the original name for decades, but the last couple years it has really been Maroon, Gold, and Black because there were too many guys for just 2 teams.

My jersey is black so I chose to be on the black team again this year. The team score was driven in large part by one of the new members, Kiwan Watts (he placed 14th in the all around at the USA Summer Nationals in August), who won 5 events and the all around. But there were one or two events where the top 3 scorers were all from the black team. It always feels good to be on the winning team.

It’s been over 9 years since I bought a mushroom and Scott Barclay suggested I compete at the Rocky Mountain Open. After going there a couple times I decided I would focus on the ASU pre-season competition (M&G) until I could be competitive at that level (where Oklahoma brings their A team and the Olympic Training Center usually sends a few guys from the national team since it is close to the training center).

Now I can tell I won’t need to go to Rocky Mountain Open for awhile, as the level of competition at ASU is going up every year. With around 50 guys on the team now, sending 2 teams at a time to different competitions during the season, and someone at the level of Kiwan who is not able to win every event, things are looking better than ever for ASU Men’s Gymnastics!

See below for the videos from my routines at the meet. I’m excited to get back in the gym and try new things now that I’m in “off season”. 🙂

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