CHICAGO — Senior co-captain Phil Goldberg stepped forward and accepted the glass, flame-shaped trophy, raising it over his head with a grin.

The No. 6 Michigan men's gymnastics team had won the season-opening Windy City Invitational.

But before the Wolverines left the floor, they had one more task to do:

Sing.

As second-place Illinois and third-place Minnesota dispersed through the Illinois-Chicago P. E. Building, the sounds of The Victors — written in 1898 after Michigan beat the University of Chicago in football — reverberated in the city where it was born. The gymnasts on the floor pumped their fists. From the fan section, seven teammates and four members of the women's gymnastics team belted the song back at them.

Michigan last won the Windy City Invite two years ago, when the Wolverines were ranked first in the nation most of the season. This time, the Wolverines posted a 346.10 score to comfortably beat their five opponents, which included No. 3 Ohio State and No. 4 Illinois.

To cap the night, sophomore Chris Cameron took home the all-around crown, beating out Ohio State’s Jake Bateman and Tai Lee and Illinois’s Paul Ruggeri, with a score of 88.1.

“It’s the best feeling I’ve had,” said Cameron, who notched career-best scores and event titles on pommel horse and rings. “We worked in the offseason to get that good, and now it’s, ‘We hit, we win.’ ”

Michigan hit when it mattered, especially at the finish. Gymnasts may often say that event order doesn’t matter, but on Saturday, it did.

In the final rotation, Michigan was hanging onto the lead heading into parallel bars. Third-place Ohio State moved to the low-scoring pommel horse, effectively narrowing the race to the Wolverines and the second-place Illini.

And all that mattered was whether Michigan’s parallel bars team was better than the Illinois ring squad.

The Wolverines didn't do it the easy way, absorbing misses on two of their first three routines. Then senior Ralph Rosso put together a routine marred only by several steps on the dismount.

Junior co-captain David Chan, who had missed his vault in the previous rotation, more than made up for it with a 14.7 set and a second-place finish. Cameron’s hit routine (14.65) finished the night.

Illinois still had three ring men to go, but Michigan had already clinched it — and the Wolverines knew it. Fifth-year senior Paul Woodward lifted Cameron onto his shoulders as their teammates roared, “Let’s go Blue!”

“Illinois was good motivation,” Chan said. “They were really going at it, and they didn’t want us to do very well on (parallel) bars either. You could hear them from the sides. I just wanted to stick it to them.”

But it was far from a perfect meet. Michigan had to recover from a shaky start on high bar, where it managed just two hit routines. Sophomore Ben Baldus-Strauss peeled off the bar early in his set and appeared to injure himself. He returned to the floor on crutches. The extent of his injury will not be determined until receiving the results of an MRI.

Before the meet, Goldberg had declared that anything less than a win would be “unacceptable.” But victory seemed far away after the first rotation, with Michigan in fourth place.

The Wolverines got going on floor exercise, the next event. Rosso knocked out his leadoff set and his energy fed the rest of his team. Michigan ended up going five-for-six on the event, with sophomore Ian Makowske placing second overall with a career-best score of 15.3.

“The wheels came off, but we had to put them back on and go,” Michigan coach Kurt Golder said. “I think they were prepared to do that.”

Michigan began a steady climb up the rankings and moved into a tie for second with Ohio State going into the fifth rotation. Despite a less-than-stellar vault showing, the Wolverines sat in the top spot going into parallel bars. Once they had a hold on first, they refused to let go.

Cameron wouldn’t reveal whose idea it was to sing The Victors, but he promised it would become a regular feature at meets this year.

"We hit, we win," he had said.

“When we win,” he added, “we sing.”