A week ago Saturday, Wilberforce University new women’s gymnastics team had a meet-and-greet in the Bulldogs’ gym with young girls who were on campus to take part in a gymnastic tournament for club teams.
While the Wilberforce women were signing posters for the kids and chatting them up, the DJ started playing music they all liked.
“Next thing you know the young girls were all lined up doing dance moves and the Wilberforce team lined up, too and did their moves,” said Derrin Moore, the founder of Brown Girls Do Gymnastics (BGDG), which promotes the sport from club teams through the college ranks. “The two sides battled each other, and they were having fun.
“It’s something those little ones will never forget. They were able to look up to their role models in a different way. The could talk to them and touch them and laugh with them. They saw college gymnastics as something more achievable.
“It made their dreams seem more real.”
And that’s part of what made the Isla HBCU Classic at Wilberforce last weekend so historic. The three-day event not only celebrated diversity and excellence in gymnastics, but it was a showcase for many of the things that make the Historic Black College and University experience so unique.
The centerpiece of the Classic was last Sunday’s first-ever gymnastics meet between two HBCU teams — Fisk University and Wilberforce — on an HBCU campus.
Greenville University, a small NCAA Division III school from Illinois whose team was predominantly white, also took part.
The three teams put on a show unlike anything you’re used to seeing at college gymnastics meets.
In the stands at one end of the gym, some of brass section of the school’s Hounds of Sound marching band provided a high-decibel vibe before the meet and during breaks in the competition.
Friday evening there was both a Divine Nine Stroll, a choreographed procession of moves by various fraternity and sorority members; and a more rhythmic and boisterous Step Show.
After Sunday’s college competition — won by Fisk (189.175), with Greenville second (185.3) and Wilberforce third (178.7) — the two HBCU teams suddenly began an unscripted line dance that soon was joined by some members of the enthusiastic crowd.
“These gymnasts could experience all the culture of an HBCU while staying in the sport they love at the college level,” Moore said. “That was never possible until recently.”
Wilberforce president Dr. Vann Newkirk, who once held the same position at Fisk, sat in the front row Sunday with his wife, Genel.
In 2022, Fisk — with the help of BGDG — became the first HBCU to ever field a college gymnastics team.
Wilberforce, which upped its timeline by a year, launched a program this year and is the only other HBCU with a women’s gymnastics team.
Talladega College in Alabama had a team last season, but suddenly disbanded it in the summer, which is part of the reason Wilberforce — which inherited several of the Tornadoes gymnasts ― fast-forwarded its plans.
Newkirk, who played a part in getting the sport into both Fisk and Wilberforce, understands the importance of gymnastics at both schools:
“I feel this is the start of something that’s really, really big. It’s the start of a whole new era.
“Here at Wilberforce, this is going to make us the center of HBCU gymnastics; the center of gymnastics for black girls.”
And if anybody deserved being the center of attention Sunday, it was the 12 gymnasts who make up the Bulldogs team, as well as head coach Morgan Byrd and assistant coach Chynna Hibbitts.
Until early July, seven of the Wilberforce gymnasts — who’d been recruited from Florida, Minnesota, Nevada, Alabama, North Carolina and Canada — were part of the Talladega team.
On July 12, they learned via a Zoom call that the school had shuttered the program.
“I was a wreck,” said Kiora Peart-Williams, a talented gymnast from Toronto. “We all were excited to go back and after that call, we were devastated.”
Mackenzie Butler, who’s from Orlando, was especially panicked: “I was going to be a senior and all of a sudden I was like, ‘Am I going to be able to finish college? I have no team, no place to go, and it’s July already.’”
After a week of total angst, the gymnasts got word that Wilberforce would launch a team and take them in.
“To be truthful, I had no idea where Wilberforce was,” said Diamond Cook, who’s from Minneapolis and had spent a year at the University of Minnesota, though not on the gymnastics team, before transferring to Talladega. “Everybody was looking it up to find out about the school.”
Meanwhile, Wilberforce was trying to put together a program on the fly, an effort it was able to pull off thanks to the help and guidance of BGDG.
Moore was good friends with Byrd, who had been a college gymnast at Central Michigan and James Madison, and after getting a masters in kinesiology and a doctorate in physical therapy, said she was planning on being a travelling therapist and “watching college gymnastics on TV and loving it from afar.”
Moore eventually convinced her to come to Wilberforce as an assistant coach. But when the person lined up to be the head coach wasn’t able to take the job, Moore began another sales pitch.
Once Byrd finished a therapy contract in North Carolina, she came to Wilberforce as the head coach on Oct. 28.
In December, Hibbitts — a Prestonsburg, Kentucky, native who has an undergrad degree from the University of Louisville, a Juris Doctor from the University of Kentucky’s law school and is a USGA and NCAA gymnastics judge — was hired as an assistant coach and Wilberforce’s Dean of Students.
Wilberforce has no equipment, so area gymnastics facilities were contacted about providing the team training space. There were no takers until the Dayton Academy of Gymnastics in Huber Heights opened its doors.
Eventually, Wilberforce found another gym that wanted to help — the Gymnastics Training Center of Ohio (GTCO) in Franklin — and because it was a bigger facility, they relocated.
That did present one major challenge though. GTCO is a 40-minute drive from campus and the Bulldogs’ practices begin every morning at 5 a.m. There is no college shuttle bus, so the young women carpool in their own vehicles.
And then there’s the daily alarm clock that goes off well before dawn.
“I get up every morning at 3:15,” said Peart-Williams. “We leave by 4:15. Practice might end at 7 and by the time I get home and changed, I might have class at 9 a.m. or 10.”
Byrd appreciates her gymnasts’ commitment to their sport and studies: “I couldn’t be prouder of them. They’re carrying 3.4 and 3.5 grade point averages.”
President Newkirk furthered that thought: “They have turned out to be some of our very best students. And I’ll tell you, what they’re doing is contagious.”
Olympic inspiration
The first two black women gymnasts to represent the United States at the Olympics were Dominque Dawes and Betty Okino who competed at the Barcelona Games in 1992.
It wasn’t that black women before them didn’t have the talent. It was that the opportunity was limited at best and often nonexistent.
I covered those ‘92 Games and talked to both of them about the struggles they’d faced along the way and how they hoped they were opening doors for other gymnasts of color.
That wish became a wondrous reality at the 2024 Games in Paris. The U.S. women won gold with the most racially diverse American gymnastics team in Olympics history:
Jordan Chiles is a product of an African-American father and Latina mother; Hezly Rivera is of Dominican descent; Simone Biles is African American; Jade Carey is of Jewish heritage; and Suni Lee’s parents are Hmong.
Biles — with 11 Olympic medals and 30 World Championship medals — is the most decorated women’s gymnast in history.
Her inspiration has helped other gymnasts of color become champions.
At the U.S. Gymnastics Championships in 2022, the top three athletes on the podium — Konnor McClain, Shilese Jones, and Jordan Chiles — were all black.
At present 10 percent of gymnastic scholarships in the NCAA go to black athletes.
And should a gymnast have wanted to go an HBCU and compete collegiately, it would have been impossible until three years ago.
It’s that lack of opportunity that has driven Moore the past decade. She started Brown Girls Do Gymnastics in 2015 after finding closed doors herself in college.
She grew up in Tallahassee, Fla., competed in club-level gymnastics and was enamored by the HBCU experience.
Florida A&M University is located in Tallahassee and her parents had season tickets to Rattler football games.
She ended up going to Xavier University in New Orleans, another HBCU, but when she petitioned the administration to start a gymnastics program, she said she was told she ought to try cheerleading instead.
She eventually left her pharmacy studies and pursued a career in gymnastics and acrobatics. She became the owner and head coach of In-Flight Gymnastics and Circus in Georgia and launched BGDG to provide financial and other support for under-represented gymnasts.
Her organization helped the teams at Fisk, Talladega and Wilberforce recruit athletes, find coaches and secure training space. BGDG holds annual conferences and camps to guide young gymnasts and their parents as well as more accomplished athletes.
Byrd has a special appreciation for what Moore does.
Although she was on a very diverse high school team in the Washington D.C. area, she said when she joined the Central Michigan University team she was one of just two black athletes on the squad and experienced a lot of teasing:
“We were made fun of for our shower caps and bonnets and other things that made us different. It wasn’t the best of time for me.”
She said there were times she was ready to crumble but her parents were there for her.
“I was a minority scholar, so I didn’t stay in the athletic dorm and it was those people and my church community that lifted me.
“But through it all I was able to grow and get some tough skin.”
She said she had a much better experience at James Madison University, where her team won back-to-back National Association of Intercollegiate Gymnastic Clubs titles.
She has drawn on all those lessons as she’s built the Bulldogs’ program this year.
One of the biggest challenges she — and Hibbitts — had was finding a new wardrobe in Wilberforce’s colors.
“For my birthday, I told my mom I need some green and gold. She went to Nordstrom Rack and found a lot.”
Her proudest acquisition was a pair of high-heeled, glittery green and gold ankle boots she wore into Sunday’s meet. Soon though she shed them so she could run and congratulate her athletes after each effort.
Whirlwind schedule
Before last weekend, the Wilberforce team had competed in six meets across the country in just over a month.
They opened the season Jan. 4 in San Diego at the American Gold Women’s Collegiate Gymnastics Classic and competed against Arizona, Rutgers and Southern Utah.
Since then, they’ve been in meets at Kent State, Nashville, Chicago, Ball State and Bridgeport, Connecticut. Fisk joined them at three events.
This Thursday the team travels to Eastern Michigan for a meet and in early March it closes its season with meets at Bowling Green and Western Michigan.
So to finally be at home one weekend and showcase themselves in front of a Wilberforce community that was just getting to know them was a real treat they said.
The crowd not only included the Wilberforce community, but area alums from other HBCUs.
Although the Wilberforce baseball team had opened its season with three games in Alabama on Friday and Saturday and hadn’t gotten back to campus until 3 a.m. Sunday, two players — pitcher/middle infielder Xavier Thompson and pitcher Mar’juan Wells — were in the stands.
“They support us, so now we want to support them,” Wells said. “It’s all love.”
Not far away, Dayton mayor Jeff Mims sat with his granddaughter who is a junior at Miami Valley School.
“She a gymnast and now she’s thinking of going here,” he said. “This is good for her to see.”
The star of the meet was Fisk’s Morgan Price, who was the All-Around champion at the USAG national championships last year. She won the floor, the vault and all-around honors on Sunday.
Peart-Williams, a sophomore, won the uneven bars, was third in the vault, fifth on the beam and finished fourth in the all-around.
Cook got her highest score ever, a 9.765, in the floor exercise.
“Oh my God, this was an honor to be part of history today,” Cook said afterward. “The vibes, the whole experience, it was amazing.
“My goal was just to go out, show my gymnastics, do my best and have some fun with my teammates. And that’s what happened!”
As she spoke, you noticed her smile matched her name.
“Yeah, I got four (stones) put in my teeth over winter break,” she said.
She flashed a toothy smile to show them off and started to laugh.
On this day, history came with some sparkle, too.
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