Simpson College’s men’s gymnastics team had a strong performance at their second home meet of the season against The College of William & Mary. The Storm earned their second-best team score of the year with a 295.150, and recorded three event winners, despite their team loss.

The Storm began their competition with a season high score on the floor exercise. Sophomore Jake Smith led the team on the floor with a top-scoring routine and a career-high score of 13.500.
“Competing in the last floor spot does put some pressure on me, but reminding myself I’m there for a reason and knowing I have a whole team behind me helps when I go to compete,” Smith said. “I feel I show up for the team as someone who they can rely on to go out and make routines.”

Smith followed his floor performance with a season-high 13.400 on vault, which set up first-year Braxton Jones to win his second vault title of the year with a 14.000.

Jones has remained a consistent athlete for the Storm on vault and is ranked No. 12 in the country on the apparatus, according to Road to Nationals, an NCAA gymnastics scoring website.

“It feels awesome to win another title at home,” Jones said. “It feels great to be successful around my people and in my space.”

Jones felt pressure before completing his routines but managed this feeling by visualizing at practices before the competition.

“I put myself in a meet situation and try and mentally feel like I’m competing, so when I step out onto the floor, it feels the same,” he said.

The Storm finished the meet with one more event winner on the pommel horse, Junior Captain Alex Catchpole. Catchpole became the first Simpson gymnast to win a pommel horse title with a 12.700. He said earning this title was a huge honor.

“It finally shows all my hard work paying off and is a testament to my determination to show the NCAA what I’m capable of,” he said.

Catchpole also claimed a second-place title on parallel bars, which tied his season-high score of 13.250, and helped the Storm record their top score on the event for the season.

Two notable performances for the Storm came from first-year Alex Campbell and junior Milo Staley. Both athletes competed in the all-around, where Campbell executed his first-ever all-around performance, and Staley recorded his top-scoring performance of the season.

Staley registered a career-high on the high bar and season highs on the floor, still rings and parallel bars. Campbell set a new career-best score of 12.900 on the floor exercise

“My goals were to have fun and focus on the team, hit six for six of my routines and improve from last weekend,” Staley said. “I know I can do all these routines so it’s important to be confident.”

Staley said going into the next competition, he wants to continue to improve his scores and stay in the moment.
Campbell had similar goals of having fun and hitting his routines.

“I hit all my routines and did my job. Some things may not have been perfect, but they’re simple fixes, and nothing that going back in the gym and training hard can’t fix,” he said.

Campbell said his goals will remain the same for the Storm’s next competition: “Go out on whatever events I am responsible for and do my job and hit for the team.”

The Storm will host another competition in Cowles Fieldhouse on Sunday, March 9, against Greenville University. Catchpole said this weekend he wants the team to continue to build confidence when competing.

“I want our guys to go into every week knowing they’ll perform to the best of their ability and that they belong on this stage,” he said.