April 5, 2008

WEST POINT, N.Y. - Navy gymnast Adam Stanton (Jr./Centennial, Colo.) placed among the top-five competitors in three events to lead the Midshipmen to a fourth-place finish at the ECAC Championship on Friday night.

Temple won the team title and earned a spot in the NCAA Championship with a score of 341.45 points, just edging William & Mary's 341.35-point tally. Illinois-Chicago came in third with its 340.9 points, followed by Navy's 336.7 points, Springfield's 322.2 points and MIT's 310.3 points.

Navy topped all schools on the parallel bars (55.95 points), while finishing as the third-best team on the pommel horse (53.85 points), still rings (56.45 points) and high bar (54.8 points). The Midshipmen did not finish lower than fourth in any event.

Stanton led all gymnasts on the pommel horse with a solid 14.1-point showing. The Navy junior also placed fourth on the parallel bars with a 14.2 and led the Mids with a fifth-place score of 14.45 on the still rings.

Navy rookie Dylan Parrott (Fr./Rockwell, N.C.) also claimed top honors in one event and finished among the top six in two other competitions. Parrott produced an impressive 14.6-point mark from the judges to rank first on the parallel bars and ranked fifth on the high bar with a 14.0. He also came in sixth in the all-around, racking up 84.05 points among the six disciplines and scoring a 14.0 or better in four events.

Fellow all-around gymnast Christopher Tam (Sr./Draper, Utah) tallied 83.95 points in the all-around to follow Parrott in seventh place. Tam led the Midshipmen on the high bar and landed third overall with a 14.3 and finished eighth on the still rings with a 14.35 from the judges.

Joseph Atzenbeck (Jr./Broomfield, Colo.) and Grant Waldron (Fr./Columbia, Md.) also placed among the conference's top-eight gymnasts in at least one event on Friday. Atzenbeck earned an eighth-place score on both the high bar (13.9) and pommel horse (13.55), while Waldron came in seventh on the vault with his 15.25-point performance.

The top-eight gymnasts in each discipline will have their shot to earn a title and bring home a medal in the individual event finals tonight, starting at 6 p.m.