If there ever is an attempt to resurrect high school boys gymnastics – a sport that hasn’t been part of the Kansas State High School Activities Association since 1990 – the first thing that should be presented is the success of Free State High alumnus Scott Bregman.

The 2005 graduate could perform only with the Lawrence Gymnastics Academy during his high school days, but the University of Michigan still came calling, and Bregman has been nothing short of spectacular for the Wolverines men’s gymnastics squad – which currently is ranked No. 1 in the nation.

“It’s just a really different experience from when I was in high school,” Bregman said in a phone interview. “You’re competing for the team … you never know if you’re going to be making the lineup, you never know if you’re going to be competing week-to-week, so you think a lot different mentally.

“There’s not that many opportunities to do gymnastics (in high school), so to compete at this level is really just a great honor, and to be successful it’s just even more than I really could have expected or hoped for.”

The training has been a big change for Bregman as he now focuses on the floor exercise and vault as opposed to performing in all six events, as he did during his pre-college years, when he earned Kansas State all-around championships from 2002-2005.

“It’s easier to get to the top level on those two events because you can devote more time to learning a new technique and protecting your basics so you can get better at the harder skills,” Bregman said. “I’ve been training really hard on the floor, and I feel that if I keep it up I could get All-American floor, and hopefully we’ll be a top-three team so the whole team will be All-Americans.”

Bregman already has an All-American title of a different sort. He was named a College Gymnastics Association Academic All-American in his freshman year at Michigan.

His success has begun to spill over onto the gymnastics side, where he currently is ranked No. 3 in the nation in the floor exercise with a 9.617 average of his three best scores.

Bregman’s biggest highlight in his sophomore season came in a Jan. 27 home meet against two-time defending champion Oklahoma, when he tied with Oklahoma’s Jonathan Norton – the reigning NCAA All-Around champion – with a career-best 9.80 on the floor. The Wolverines topped the Sooners, 221.60-218.0, and Bregman’s performance earned him the Newt Loken award – named for a former Michigan gymnastics coach and given to the top competitor at each of Michigan’s meets.

Michigan gymnast Scott Bregman performs the floor exercise in a meet with Oklahoma on Jan. 27. Bregman, a 2005 Free State High graduate, could not compete for his high school. Boys gymnastics has not been part of the Kansas State High School Athletics Association curriculum since 1990.

“It was really exciting because there was a lot of pressure at that meet since we were going against a great team,” the former Free Stater said. “So for me to go out and do pretty much the best floor routine I’ve ever done was pretty exciting. So I was really honored to receive that award.”

The Maize and Blue have been a bit of a surprise this yea. They weren’t even predicted to win the Big 10 Conference – let alone contend for the national title. Michigan was picked preseason to finish third in conference and started the season ranked No. 8 nationally.

“It was a lot of motivation because we knew that the coaches and the other teams really weren’t expecting it from us,” Bregman said. “And we knew that we had worked really hard in the offseason to get stronger. So when those rankings came out we were sort of like, ‘We’re not that team. We’re not that team,’ and just kept pushing ourselves so that when we started the season we’d show everybody that those rankings were not accurate.”

Although Bregman had a bit of a hiccup on the floor exercise in the Wolverines’ narrow 208.90-208.30 win at Minnesota on Feb. 17 to keep their undefeated season alive, Bregman did have a strong performance on the vault with a 8.95 – a career-best.

“We had a week off before our Minnesota meet, so I feel like some of us were a little rusty in terms of the mindset because we had been going week after week … and to have that (bye week), I think, kind of slowed us down and got us kind of out of a groove,” Bregman said. “But I was really excited about my vault because I was doing a brand new vault for me from what I was doing and I’ve been struggling this year on vault a little bit. To do a new vault in a big pressure situation is really exciting, and I stuck it and was really just shocked that I had won because I had never won a vault title thus far in college.”

All of the aspiring high school boys gymnasts in the state of Kansas have been given a guiding force into the realm of college gymnastics.

“I try to tell them that it’s hard in high school because you’re not getting that kind of recognition that maybe some of the other student-athletes at that point are getting,” Bregman said. “But it’s still worth it – all the hard work – if you can get to the collegiate level.”