Jordynn Cromartie faced a difficult decision as she began her senior year of high school, just as numerous Black gymnasts have for generations. The Houston-born teen desired to enroll in a historically Black college or university, and she wanted to participate in the sport to which she has devoted most of her life.

Still, there was a catch. At Thanksgiving with her uncle, Frank Simmons, a member of the Board of Trustees at Fisk University, a private historically Black college or University with around 1,000 students in Nashville, Tennessee, Cromartie admitted that she could not do both.

At this time, her aunt and uncle first suggested she enroll at Fisk. However, the absence of a gymnastics team puts a damper on her hopes of ever competing.

 

“He and my aunt were like, ‘Oh you haven’t made a decision; you should come to Fisk,’” Cromartie shared. “I’m like, ‘Well, they don’t have a gymnastics team.’ To go to a college that does not have what I would be working for forever was crazy to me,” she added.

Simmons was astounded and promised his niece to bring the gymnastics team to life. With this promise, he meant business. In a matter of weeks, her uncle linked Derrin Moore, the Atlanta-based founder of Brown Girls Do Gymnastics, with Fisk’s truFisk’s who had been attempting to gather support for an HBCU for years. After hearing Moore’s piMoore’se trustee offered to give $100,000 right then and there if Fisk initiated playing the sport.

 

And in what seemed like a split second, all the obstacles and false beliefs that Moore had faced while attempting to convince an HBCU to join an increasingly diverse sport over more than 10 years vanished.

Cromartie and her teammates will break new ground on Friday at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas when they become the first HBCU to participate in an NCAA women’s gymnastics meet. The news comes just 14 months after Fisk committed to starting a program from scratch.

According to AP News, the Bulldogs will compete in the first Super 16 alongside enduring NCAA contenders like Oklahoma, UCLA and Michigan, Southern Utah, North Carolina and Washington.

 

 

“I feel like it’s nice to show that Black girls can do it, too,” Cromartie eagerly expressed. “We have a team that’s 100% of people of color, and you’ve never seen that before anywhere.”

“I feel like we have a point to prove,” she added.

The look of elite women’s gymnastics is evolving. Even though athletes of color have long demonstrated excellence at the highest levels of competition, Black athletes” participation has increased significantly over the past 10 years due to the popularity of Olympic champions Simone Biles and Gabby Douglas.

 

Since 2012, when Gabby Douglas became the first Black woman to win Olympic gold, the percentage of scholarships given to Black gymnasts at the NCAA Division I level has increased to around 10% from 7%. Today, more than 10% of USA Gymnastics athletes identify as Black. Compared to 1989, when Georgia’s Corrinne Tarver became the first Black woman to win an NCAA all-around title, this is a considerable improvement.

 

“When I first went to school, there were a scattering of (Black gymnasts),” noted Tarver, now the head coach and athletic director at Fisk University.

“One on this team, one on that team … there wasn’t a lot of African American gymnasts around back then compared to today,” she added.

Umme Salim-Beasley was unaware of it when she looked into colleges in the early 1990s. Salim-Beasley grew up close to Washington, D.C., and trained in the same gym as Dominique Dawes, who has won four Olympic medals. An HBCU was Salim-Beasley’s choice of college. She was surprised by the response she got when she revealed she was a gymnast to an HBCU recruiter at a college fair.

Salim-Beasley, who eventually competed at West Virginia and is now the head coach at Rutgers, believed they did not consider it a sport for women of color. This was the perception, according to her, that gymnastics did not appeal to or welcome enough women of color, which has only increased how positive the response to Fisk’s first class has been.

 

Moore and Salim-Beasley, a Brown Girls Do Gymnastics advisory council member, worked tirelessly to schedule initial meetings with HBCU athletics administrators. Moore and Salim-Beasley have contacted the presidents of nine HBCUs in the months since the launch of Fisk’s program.

People are reaching out, as per Moore, even though they still have several concerns and aren’t ready to decide. Fisk is in an admirable, if challenging, position due to all of this. Other HBCUs are keeping an eye on the program from a distance to see how Fisk manages the significant financial and logistical challenges of starting one. The program is, therefore, in a beta testing period.

Although they are currently practicing at a club gym a few miles from campus because the Bulldogs lack an on-campus facility, they are raising money to change this situation soon. While they await the resolution of their NCAA status, they are competing this year as an independent.

Among the first events on their schedule are competitions at Michigan and Georgia, as well as at Rutgers.

“It would have been really easy to just put in schools that were not as strong and then make our whole schedule like that and then just hope for the best. But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted them to realize that they belong on that stage,” Tarver explained.

 

Tarver is executing her recruitment strategy in such a way after spending countless hours on Zoom last spring requesting for young women of color to take a chance at something brand new.

“Basically, I pitched them on the dream,” Tarver said. “I told them they’ll be a part of history. Their names will go down in history as the first HBCU ever.” 

More people bought it than Tarver had anticipated. In order to compete with her older sister, Frankie, Morgan Price originally committed to Arkansas. However, Price was attracted to the opportunity once Fisk declared it would make the bold decision to compete in 2023.

 

Price emphasized the uniqueness of being pioneers and the privilege of creating something entirely new. “Since we are the first, it’s kind of special. We get to build it from the ground up,” Price said.

Being the first has its advantages. In the fall, several Bulldogs were guests on “The Jennifer Hudson Show.” Throughout the season, they will be accompanied by an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker. This has made a sizable wave in the realm of social media.

 

As Price returned to her Texas club gym shortly after committing to Fisk University, she felt an electric buzz from the younger black gymnasts eager to pick her brain about her upcoming college experience.

Simply put, that is the plan in the grand scheme of things. Moore thinks other HBCUs will soon begin to emulate Fisk’s success.

Simply not the first, either. This distinction will go to the athletes on the team who, in Tarver’s words, “come from backgrounds where they were kind of told that they weren’t as good,” as they break that record on Friday. The first salute to the judges will be given by the women wearing blue and gold leotards.  

Athletes are free to pursue their dreams without compromising their heritage.

“Already being an HBCU, we’re the underdogs,” a confident Cromartie said. “We haven’t had much time to practice. We don’t have the resources of other schools yet … but we are eager to prove we can keep up with everyone else. That we belong.” 

 

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