The Quinnipiac University acrobatics and tumbling team will travel to Baltimore, Maryland on Saturday, Feb.10 for their first meet of the season against the Morgan State University Bears.
Quinnipiac is coming off a winning previous season with a record of 6-2 overall and 5-1 in conference. Both losses came from Baylor University, once in the regular season and once in the National Collegiate Acrobatics and Tumbling Association semifinals.
The Bobcats brought home four titles at the 2023 NCATA national championships. These titles came from the inversion pyramid event, the duo tumbling event, quad tumbling and the aerial tumbling event. 16 different Bobcats contributed to winning these titles; of those 16, only three have graduated, giving Quinnipiac the advantage of experience.
Speaking of experience, the 2023-2024 season is the first for the Morgan State Bears, who were announced to join the NCATA in April 2022. They became the school’s 16th athletic program and the 40th member of the NCATA.
The Bears held a pre-season meet called the Orange and Blue Meet. This meeting gave viewers an idea of how the Bears will perform this season. In this meet, the Bears started with a score of 25.75 out of 40 in the compulsory event. The highest score came from the toss heat with a score of 8.40 out of 10. The next event was the Acro event where they scored 22.08 out of 30, with their highest score being 8.40 in the five-element heat. The Bears went into halftime with a score of 69.10.
In the open-pass during the tumbling event, first-year Kayla Bryant demonstrated her remarkable skill set earning a personal best score of 9.05 out of 9.90. Morgan State finished with a score of 211.150 out of a possible 300.00 points.
Last season, Quinnipiac averaged a total score of 271.053 and never dropped below 265.000, so this should be an easy win for the Bobcats, but we won’t find that out until the competition ends on Saturday.
The meeting will be available for viewers from home to watch on Morgan State’s website at 2 p.m. EST.
*Although this meet gave unofficial scores, it gave viewers an idea of how the Bears will perform this season.”
