TUESDAY, AUGUST 30,1966 THE MICHIGAN DAILY PAGE FIVE TUESDAY. AUGUST 30, 1966 THE MICHIGAN DAiLY ~'AGE FIVE Michigan Gymnasts Pursue Seventh Straight Title By BILL LEVIS title meet. The dual meets count- ed one-third, one point for eache Back in 1961, everyone in the victory, while the conference meety Big Ten was wondering if any counted two-thirds, 16 points for other school besides Illinois was first, 14 for second and so on1 ever going to win another Big Ten down the line.{ gymnastics championship. Come-from-Behind Win 1 The Fightin' Illini had won the Michigan was 6-1 and Michigant title for the previous 11 years. State was 7-0 going into the Bigv Only one other school had copped Ten meet held at Indiana. Mich-g the crown since 1940 and that was igan then won the tourney atc Minnesota, which won it four Bloomington in a thriller, defeat- times back in the 40s. Michigan, ing the Spartans and the other six until that time, had never even conference schools competing withk won a Big Ten gymnastics chai- at 188.40 total. Michigan Statet pionship. finished second with 186.40. Under Wolverine Coach Newt Laken, a the new scoring system, the Wol- former standout gymnast at Min verines won the crown with 22 nesota, had tutored Michigan for points while the Spartans followed 13 years heading into the event- with 21.{ ful 1961 season. Hedseemed to By the scoring system employed wonder if a title would ever come the year before, Michigan would his way. not have been conference champs 'M' Starts Streak in 1966. In 1965, only the duall Well, starting with that season, meets counted. The conference Coach Loken stopped wondering. meet only decided individual His gymnasts began then and champions. This coming winter, there to prove that Illinois was the same scoring. system as last not the only school that could win year will be used. The dual meets titles in streaks. The Wolverines and conference meet will both be haven't given up the crown since, of importance. Now the other schools are be- Miller Wins Tramp Title ginning to wonder if Michigan, A team of few stars for the 1966 like Illinois before it; will ever let Wolverines was clearly evident in go of the championship. the Big Ten meet. The gymnasts The Wolverines have since cap- produced only one Big Ten title- tured six straight Big Ten cham- holder on their journey to a sixth pionships and even managed to straight crown. Wayne Miller, a win the NCAA title in 1963. Look- second semester sophomore this ing ahead to a seventh straight in fall, captured the trampoline title. 1967 season, the gymnasts will be In 1965, Miller, a native of Lafa- headed by seven seniors and five yette, La., finished third in the returning juniors. world championships held in Lon- Team Had Few Stars don. The first place finisher was The 1966 season was a year de- Gary Erwin, a standout Wolverine scribed by Coach Loken as a gymnast in 1963-65. This year's championship team "with very world championships were held in few stars. They were hard working Miller's home town, and he won dedicated athletes who made it the world title plus the NCAA and 'Six in '66' after a loss in the con- National AAU crowns. ference season to Michigan State. Coach Loken pointed out that The boys just bounced back in the Michigan had many runner-ups Big Ten meet to take the title." and third place finishers in the Under the new scoring system Big Ten meet. Phip Fuller, a sen- initiated last year, the conference ior from Florida and one of Mich- winner was decided by both the igan's gymnastic twins finished dual meet season and the Big Ten second in the floor exercise. The floor exercise is a new event replacing tumbling three years ago. It consists of at least 11 stunts put together in a smooth continuous routine done in at least 50 seconds but not longer than 70. It contains much of what was done in tumbling but also gives the gymnast the freedom of choice of what he is to do. Art Baessler, one of the return- ing seniors who have been the backbone of the squad for the past two years netted a third in the side horse. Captain-elect Gary Vander Voort, the team's most valuable gymnast as a sophomore and a junior, pulled down a sec- ond in the all-around and thirds in the parallel and horizontal bars. The all-around consists of all seven events on the gymnastic program except the tramp. Another senior, Ken Williams, was awarded a second place on the 'p'-bars. Rich Blanton, one of three boys who graduated in the spring, pulled down a second on the still rings. Blanton was nomi- nated for the newly established Nissen Award last year, given an- nually to the nation's outstand- ing senior collegiate gymnast. Jim Curzi of Michigan State was named to receive the award. The two other graduates that will be sorely missed by the team are captain Ned Duke and John Cashman. Duke competed on the parallel bars and still rings while Cashman concentrated his efforts to the horizontal bar. Vic Conant, a junior, was the other second place finisher for the Maize and Blue in the Big Ten championships. He finished behind Miller on the trampoline. After the Big Tens the Mich- Cooley. He said, "Both boys should igan gymnasts headed for the be recognized on the tramp with NCAA Mid-East regional last Vic (Conant) finishing second in March where they finished third the Big Ten. Keith (Cooley) came out of gym class to make the behind Southern Illinois and team. Michigan State. Miller again took "As a group, the sophomores the trampoline title while Vander did very well last year. (Dave) Voort tied for first in the parallel Geddes had limited experience on bars with Curzi. the sidehorse and did quite well." The following week at the Jacobs Hot on Trampoline NCAA finals at Penn State, the Of the incoming sophomores, Wolverines finished fifth as a the most impressive to date is team as Southern Illinois took Dave Jacobs on-of course, Mich- the team crown. Miller was the igan's specialty-the trampoline. only individual champ for Mich- Along with Miller, he competed in igan with a first on the tramp. the world championships over the Besides the seven seniors re- summer. All together, there are 12 turning, including Phip Fuller's new gymnasts aiming for a spot twin brother, Chip, Cliff Chilvers, on the varsity squad. and Chris Vanden Broek, gre five Coach Loken sees a four team lettermen juniors. Of these, Coach race in the coming Big Ten sea- Loken showed special praise for son. He noted that "Illinois is Conant and trampolinist Keith graduating no one and they have a good bunch of sophomores com- ing up. Michigan State will find Curzi hard to replace but they have three or four excellent fresh- men from last year. "Iowa looks like the team to beat though. Their freshman team even beat the varsity last year." New Slogan As Coach Loken heads into his twentieth year as Michigan gym- nastic coach, he seems hard pressed for a new slogan for 1967. In the past, it's been "two in '62," "three in '63" and so on to "six in '66." It may be a little re- dundant, but the simpliest seems the best-"seven in '67." The gymnastic team is just lucky the streak did not start in any other year. It would sure be hard to use a slogan like "nine in '67." GARY VANDER VOORT i I - ___ - - r 'y;a 4 . ~{". ":; r.; ' ~ j .+ &?. /.' r , ,, I S : ' . 4 " it ' i ,"' Every year we extend this greeting, accompanied by a warm KEN WilLIAMS GOES through his routine on the parallel bars. Williams took a second place on the p-bars in the Big Ten tourna- ment to help nail down the Wolverines' sixth straight title. Gridders Seek To Recover From Year of Hard Luck (Continued from Page 3) other new Wolverine assistant coach, George Mans. Hardcore e fans will remember Mans as cap- tain of the 1961 team, who has now returned to Michigan after two years with General Motors and three as a coach at Michigan Tech and Eastern Michigan. He assumes a newly-created capacity of offensive end coach. Mans completes the membership of the incoming frosh coaching quartet. These four join the three left from the old guard-Elliott, Mason and offensive backfield coach Hank Fonde. So Spin the Fates All seven will be on hand to in- struct four weeks of gut-busting work under a September sun be- fore the 1966 season gets under- way. Whatever happens in that interim and in the following ten weeks has to be up to the players, the coaches and Lady Luck (and not necessarily in that order). "Looking at it realistically, us- ing the paper statistics as a guide, this year's Michigan team should be somewhere in the mid- dle of the race. Michigan State, Purdue and Ohio State look like the top three teams in the Big Ten," remarked Elliott this sum- mer. "But since injuries and the breaks are an integral part of ,the game and since each team is a new entity every year, we'll be out there giving everything we have. The coaches and the players think we can win it . . . that's why we play the game. "After all, a hundred thousand people aren't going to sit in a stadium and watch two guys fig- ure it out on paper." It's just that stat sheets have a habit of getting ripped up. handshake, to thousands of Michigan men. Our University Shops on-campus at the University of Michigan, Princeton, Harvard, Yale and Stanford have made us authorities on what college men like. Our complete collections of clothing and furnishings have been developed to answer every phase of University life. 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