Around The World With Heath Mueller

OU men's gymnastics Heath Mueller checks in with some highlights of the World University Games held in Daegu, South Korea. The games featured current or recently graduated student-athletes from around the world and ran from Aug. 21-31.

Before I went to Korea for the World University Games the team and I had a training camp out in Anaheim, where the World Championships of Gymnastics was taking place. We got to watch the US team win the silver medal which helped motivate us to do well.

We arrived in South Korea about a week before our competition began. I was amazed at how big everything was and all the preparations that the Koreans made for this event. The athletic village, where all the athletes from some 20 different sports and about 45 different countriesstayed, was built for this event. They had a cafeteria which featured the same food almost everyday, but I was thankful that I didn't have to eat Korean food which I was not big on. The facility also had a computer lab, post office, a dance club, barber shop, and a bank to exchange currency.

The week before the competition we trained at a nice gym and it had some good equipment. I was actually worried about the equipment situation before we left because I thought their equipment might be sub-par. The training went well for most of the team there. Some of the guys had some trouble with sore backs but I was able to do everything I needed to prepare for the competition.

After being there a week, the team competed on August 28th. We were in the second to last session and we started on floor exercise. Things went well on floor except for one unfortunate fall. After floor we moved on to pommel horse where everyone had solid routines, which put us in first place.

From pommel horse we moved on to still rings where we improved our lead thanks to two impressive sets from Kevin Tan (Penn State) and Marshal Erwin (Stanford) both putting up 9.5's. From rings the team moved on to vault where we had three good vaults but the Russians were on rings and did well. Their performance cut into our lead.

From vault we moved to our 5th event parallel bars. We did not have a great performance at this station. That opened the door for the Russians as they overtook the lead after the parallel bars. Then we moved on to our last event ,the horizontal bar, where we struggled again. We were not able to regain our lead and the Russians finished first in our session. We placed second in our session, but the last session remaining featured some good teams. After the final session we ended up in seventh. This was not a bad finish for the US team considering that was the highest we have placed in the last 20 years.

Getting to go to Korea was a great experience for me because I got to see a different culture and meet so many people from around the world. Going there and getting to see such great gymnastics was motivating for me because it showed me where I want to be with my gymnastics.

University of Oklahoma Athletics

Related News

Related Videos

Sponsors