U.S. Men's Gymnastics Team Take Home Bronze, Their First Olympic Medal in 15 Years

For the first time in nearly 20 years, the U.S. men’s gymnastics team is taking home an Olympic medal.

Team USA gymnasts Paul Juda, Fred Richard, Brody Malone, Asher Hong and Stephen Nedoroscik were strong and steady throughout the competition to earn bronze, behind gold medalists Japan and second-place China.

The U.S. finished with a total score of 257.793, just 1.801 points behind Japan.

The hardware marks the first medal in the team event since 2008 for the American men’s gymnastics team, who finished fifth in qualifying rounds on Saturday.

Going into their final apparatus, the pommel horse, the U.S. sat in third behind China and Japan.

That's when Nedoroscik, a 25-year-old pommel horse specialist, put up a 14.866 to guarantee the U.S. a medal. The team was seen screaming and cheering on the arena floor with an American flag after the final scores went up.

After qualifiers on Saturday, Juda, 23, told reporters that the team was focused on the task ahead, and would pay no mind to numbers and statistics.

“We didn’t watch any scores. We’re not going to watch any scores for the next competition,” he said. “We’re just going to go and do our routines and -

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lay the cards where they fall. I’ve always just tried to take any competition one event at a time, especially as I’ve gotten older. But then I just look in the crowd and I see all those people and I go, ‘Oh my god, it’s just gymnastics!’”

Richard, 20, previously told PEOPLE earlier this month that heading to his first Olympics is “really exciting,” 

“My biggest goal is by the end of this Olympics, number one, I guess everybody starts to know who I am and realize, okay, this kid is the future of gymnastics and for the next coming Olympics he’s going to be something big,” he said. “It’s kind of like my, ‘Hello, world.’ I got that from Tiger Woods. It’s kind of just telling the world that you are going to be something special.”

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