In the narrow landscape of NCAA men’s gymnastics, one program sits atop the throne.
Stanford has dominated the past four years, winning national championships in 2019, 2021 and 2022. The lone year without a Cardinal championship was 2020, canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Saturday, the No. 2 Michigan men’s gymnastics team (22-9 overall) had the opportunity to change that narrative at the NCAA Championships Meet — but ultimately fell short.
Despite setting a new season record with a total team score of 419.889, the Wolverines fell just short of Stanford, as the Cardinal won yet another national championship. Stanford maintained its seat atop the sport, and Michigan settled for second fiddle to the Cardinal’s 422.458 points.
“I’m super proud of our freshmen,” Michigan coach Yuan Xiao said. “Fred Richard, and also Landen (Blixt) are two guys that give the team so much confidence.”
The freshmen rightly earned Xiao’s praise as Richard was the hero for Michigan. He won individual titles in parallel bars and high bars to boost him to the all-around title.
While Richard, became a three-event national champion, fellow freshman Blixt and senior Adam Wooten paced the Wolverines’ floor routine, both scored 14.233s which pushed Michigan ahead of Oklahoma for second place. Richard lost the execution-score tiebreaker to Kleuber in his floor routine, an impressive 14.800, but remained pleased with his performance.
“When you compete for the team and you succeed, everybody feels like they succeeded,” Richard said. “It’s a whole different feeling.”
Michigan’s success during the first day of the meet as they set their then-season-record score of 413.992 to advance to day two for a shot at the finals.
“I think a lot of things went well on day one, we just knew we had to qualify … and we did that,” Senior Adam Wooten said. “A lot of day one was conserving our energy and keeping our minds right.”
The calm and positive energy put forth by the senior leader was evident in the Wolverine’s day two performance, when they set another team record en route to their runner-up finish.
“Once we got to day two, one thing we did well was to stay loose, stay calm, and roll with the punches as they came,” Wooten said. “That really helped us minimize mistakes and react pretty well when we did have the couple mistakes that we had.”
The most minor of mistakes remained between the Wolverines and the national championship. A sub-par routine from Richard on the pommel horse and a trio of falls on Michigan’s high-bar routine were the difference. However, Michigan’s program is building something that Xiao is excited about.
“Last year we were 10 points behind the number one team which is Stanford,” Xiao said. “This year we closed the gap to one or two points. It was a big gap that we closed.”
Growth and progress will remain imperative for Xiao’s program, which is looking to return to the success it found in back-to-back national championships in 2013 and 2014 when Xiao was an assistant coach.
“We’re working hard and are happy with where we are at,” Xiao said. “So in the next two years, we can bring the trophy back to Michigan.”
For now though, second place will have to do.