Former, Future Sooners Set for National Meet

NORMAN – Six former and future Sooner gymnasts will compete in the 25th annual Houston National Invitational this weekend at the NRG Center in Houston, Texas. The meet serves as Houston's premier national and international gymnastics competition and will display competition from the junior to elite level.

2017 Oklahoma graduates and current U.S. senior men's national team members Allan Bower and Colin Van Wicklen will be competing at the meet for the second consecutive year, along with 2015 OU alum Michael Reid. Bower and Van Wicklen claimed third and fourth, respectively, in the all-around at the 2018 HNI with Bower taking first on floor exercise and Van Wicklen notching the top spot on vault and a share of first on still rings. Both former Sooners were members of the U.S. World Championships team that competed in Doha, Qatar, last fall and brought home a fourth-place team finish for the U.S. Reid, an NCAA national champion on pommel horse for the Sooners in 2015, claimed a tie for second on parallel bars at last year's event and placed sixth in the pommel horse competition.

A trio of 2019 OU signees, Lazarus Barnhill, Jack Freeman and Brayton Williams, are set to compete in the Level 10 competition at the meet. Both Barnhill and Freeman train at Cypress Academy in the Houston area. Barnhill is a current U.S. junior men's national team member with current Sooners' freshman Spencer Goodell. Barnhill took eighth in the junior division all-around at the 2018 Winter Cup Challenge in Las Vegas. Freeman brought home a fifth-place finish in the all-around at the 2018 Junior Olympic National Championships in Oklahoma City last year along with a fifth-place spot on floor and eighth-place finish on vault in the junior division at the 2018 U.S. Championships in Boston.

Williams, out of Lebanon, Tenn., competes for GymTek academy in the Knoxville, Tenn., area. In the Region 8 Championships in 2018, Williams claimed first on high bar and second on vault in the all-around.

The men's senior elite and junior level 10 action is scheduled to begin Friday with the Open Team Cup at 6 p.m. CT. The individual competition will start on Saturday at approximately 5:30 p.m.

The No. 1 Oklahoma men's gymnastics team returns to action Saturday in Lincoln, Neb., when it faces off against top-10 opponents Illinois and Nebraska. The meet is slated to begin at 6 p.m. CT.

Single meet and season tickets for all regular-season home meets are on sale now and can be purchased by calling the University of Oklahoma Ticket Office at (405) 325-2424 or toll-free at (800) 456-GoOU. Tickets can also be ordered online by visiting SoonerSports.com/tickets.

For updates and more information on Oklahoma men's gymnastics, follow the Sooners on Twitter and Instagram (@OU_MGymnastics) and like Oklahoma Men's Gymnastics on Facebook.