FEATURED STORY
Flying High
FSU’s Acrobatics and Tumbling Sport Earns NCAA Status and Rolls Out Opportunities for Women in Athletics
BY BEN CROWDER ’11/M’13
For women interested in athletic competition, the opportunities continue to expand in this 50th anniversary of the passing of Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in educational opportunities and which, in particular, opened doors to women in athletics.
Frostburg State University is at the forefront of one of the newest opportunities, adopting the relatively new Acrobatics and Tumbling sport in 2019, the year before it earned NCAA status of an emerging sport. After starting with six collegiate programs in 2009, this year the sport achieved the minimum number of teams – 40 – required to begin the process of becoming an NCAA championship sport.
Living at the intersection between two already-popular women’s sports, gymnastics and competitive cheer, Acrobatics and Tumbling, also known as A&T, combines a series of highly athletic elements of each.
“There are a handful of sport disciplines that translate over to acrobatics and tumbling, such as gymnastics, cheerleading, diving, track and field, weightlifting and a few others,” said FSU Head A&T Coach Katie Nunley. “Before acrobatics and tumbling was created, those athletes who didn’t meet the criteria of their sport discipline were denied the opportunity to continue at the collegiate level, and that’s why this sport was created.”
Sport disciplines that translate over to acrobatics and tumbling include gymnastics, cheerleading, diving, track & field and weightlifting.
FSU decided to add the up-and- coming program in 2019 when it joined the Mountain East Conference.
“It creates a new opportunity to compete in college athletics,” said Athletic Director Troy Dell. “As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Title IX, offering this as a new sport and doing it with appropriate resources helps the Athletic Department promote the University.”
It didn’t take long for the Bobcats to hit the mat running with a roster of more than 20 female student- athletes, who earned a spot in the MEC tournament in its two seasons of competition. Most recently, they secured a place in the 2022 Mountain East Championship, just narrowly falling short of winning the title, though they have produced 12 champions in the event final competitions.
“We’ve made our mark as a second- year program, and I have no doubt we will continue to be competitive within the MEC and at a national level,” said Nunley, who was voted the MEC’s coach of the year.
“Frostburg State will have a roster of approximately 30 Acrobatics and Tumbling student-athletes in the fall of 2022,” Dell said. “In addition, with our recent move to NCAA DII, it creates scholarship opportunities that did not exist for these young women. Over two-thirds of the young women participating in Acrobatics and Tumbling are on some level of athletic scholarship.”
A&T: The Basics
With such early success and growth, many are still unaware of what A&T is. And that answer is a must-see sport that combines elements from gymnastics and competitive cheer.
A meet is made up of individual and group events, all the way to a full team event with lifts, tosses and tumbling.
An Acrobatics and Tumbling meet consists of six events, which are the compulsory, acro, pyramid, toss, tumbling and team events. Each event is scored by a group of judges based on predetermined skill sets, and the team with the highest collective score wins the meet. There are two halves in a meet, with the first half including the compulsory, acro and pyramid events, followed by halftime and then the toss, tumbling and team events.
The compulsory event is the only event in which teams are required to perform the same skills to be compared against one another. Each team must perform basic skill sets that make up acrobatics and tumbling. The event is made up of a heat demonstrating acro, pyramid, toss and tumbling skills. These basic skills are then expanded on throughout the meet. This compulsory event is the only one where values are set and do not change, as the rest of the events are scored based on a start value set by the head coach. The values for these later events vary based on the difficulty level of the skills that will be performed.
The second event of a meet is acro. In this event there are combinations of lifts and tosses made up of base and top athletes. There are varying elements in each heat that must be met by the athletes performing, and each element must be held for three seconds.
The pyramid is the next event, which involves the entry, pyramid and the dismount of the top. There are three versions: the inverted, synchronized and open heats.
The fourth event is the toss, where a group of athletes form a base and toss an athlete, known as the top, in the air, who then performs aerial stunts. There are three heats in the event: the 450 Salto, synchronized and open tosses. Judges look for the stability of the base structure and the components performed by the top when scoring the tosses.
The tumbling event is worth the most of the first five events, as it features six heats, of which three are synchronized passes and three are individual passes. The synchronized passes include a duo, trio and quad pass, while the individual heats involve an aerial, six-element and open pass.
The final event is the team event, which is scored the highest of any event, as it comprises each element performed in the previous five events. Actions are always happening during this event, so eyes should always be fixed on the mat to see all of what is happening.
“The most fascinating part of a meet is the atmosphere. There is music constantly playing, the crowd cheering, and it’s so energetic,” Nunley said. “Teams are there to be competitive and win, but the sportsmanship is unlike any other sport. You’ll see teams constantly cheering for their own teammates, but also cheering on the opposing team. You’ll also see athletes dancing on their bench having a fun time and challenging someone on the opposite side to a dance battle. It’s truly unlike any sport.”
Acrobatics and Tumbling continues to grow as an up-and-coming sport for women and provides an opportunity unlike any other for potential collegiate female athletes.
Since it’s a new sport, student-athletes are largely having to learn the rules or adapt from other activities when they get to college.
“The sport is going to continue to grow at the collegiate level, but I think we will start to see more opportunities open at the high school, club and youth level,” Nunley said. “It opens a lot of doors for women athletes from multiple backgrounds since this sport is very teachable.”
“It is our hope that Frostburg State is able to continue on the upward trajectory that it is currently on and be regular fixture at the top of the Mountain East Conference,” Dell said. “When we achieve this, our program will have the ability to compete at the national level.”