The first thing you notice is the flurry of limbs.

Legs propel bodies in a dash across the mats before shooting skyward in daring leaps. Arms brace against the straining weight of bodies standing on shoulders, then radiate outward like triumphant rays of sunshine.

As iLoveMemphis’s “Hit the Quan” plays on speakers during practice, forty-five of the nation’s top former gymnasts, acrobats, and cheerleaders flip, twist, and tumble in the fluorescence of Matthew Knight Arena. Team members laugh, dance, and cheer each other on, sneakers squeaking on the polished floor. Women of different shapes, sizes, and ethnicities celebrate one another as they practice new stunts and pursue personal bests. On the sidelines, with their gym bags lined in a neat row, athletes with tired muscles and red faces receive treatment from teammates and friends using a Theragun massage gun.

This is acrobatics and tumbling, an emerging collegiate sport that demands both individual skill and the cohesion of a team. Among more than fifty schools nationwide that compete, the Ducks have excelled, due to daring leadership and their commitment to the sport’s evolution—and each other.

Take the Keogh twins, for example.

Seniors Emma and Katie Keogh helped the Ducks to their top scores of the 2022–23 season, including three victories that propelled Oregon to No. 2 in the nation. This, after the uncertainty of their first year, during which Katie was diagnosed with carcinoid cancer. Unable to compete, she instead had to relearn the foundations of her beloved sport.

“I was super lucky that I had good trainers and doctors specific to Oregon Athletics which allowed me to gain my strength back,” Katie says in a GoDucks.com video. “There was no script to follow, so it was working at my own pace, telling them what I thought I was capable of and bouncing off that. Your mind remembers everything that your body is able to do, so I took that and ran with it and was able to get some of the basics back that I didn’t think I’d potentially be able to.”

For Emma, watching her twin fight to be back on the court was “a huge adjustment”—but worse was not being able to support her in person during periods of Katie’s recovery. Luckily, she had the acrobatics and tumbling team by her side.

Says Emma: “Coming here and having forty-five people that I pretty much just met be able to listen to me and be there for me and be the people that I needed during such a hard time was such a great experience that I wouldn’t trade for the world.”

Leaping over obstacles

Acrobatics and tumbling almost didn’t become the sport it is today. It started in 2003, driven by a desire to emphasize team dynamics and the strength and grit of women athletes.

Gymnastics lacked the benefits of team building and competitive cheerleading coaches faced barrier after barrier in gaining support for their sport at the university level. But change was coming: against a backdrop in which the vast majority of institutions have failed to meet Title Nine rules requiring equitable opportunities for women to participate in sports, founders of acrobatics and tumbling began brainstorming a sport for women with cheerleading or gymnastics backgrounds.

Renee Baumgartner, MS ’89 (individualized program), PhD ’96 (educational policy and management), and Felicia Mulkey were two of those founders. The duo—Baumgartner was UO’s senior associate athletics director and Mulkey was Oregon’s first acrobatics and tumbling coach—led the charge for the “team stunts and gymnastics” team in 2007, following the lead of the University of Maryland. In 2010, they collaborated with other universities to establish the official rules of acrobatics and tumbling, basing it on gymnastics scoring and six events, and stripping it of some of the glitz and glamour of the sport’s predecessors.

Cami Wilson, BS ’23 (business administration), who is pursuing a master’s in business, was impacted by the limitations of cheerleading as a sport. She was a four-time USA all-American in high school cheerleading who came to Oregon wanting to be a Division I athlete.

Learning that acrobatics and tumbling would give her the same opportunities as a football or basketball player empowered her, and she has competed for four years.

However, Wilson and teammate Emma Keogh say the sport’s newness and lack of a male equivalent means they must keep working to reach the popularity enjoyed by other athletics.

“[Acrobatics and tumbling] might not seem as common or be as widely known but it’s very demanding and hard,” Keogh says. “It’s just like other sports. It requires you to be at the best possible level and you’re competing against the best people in your area of expertise. It’s our passion and our lifestyle and it’s what we pour our hearts into every single day.”

Adds Wilson: “Our sport is brutal. You get one shot out there; you get one performance, you get one heat and that’s it. Whereas in every other sport you may get multiple chances to recover from major mistakes, we do not. It creates a different level of pressure that some people don’t necessarily understand.”