MEET DAY INFORMATION
OPPONENT: #1 Baylor University
LOCATION: Ornelas Gym
TIME: 4 PM
WATCH: ETBUSportsNet
DIRECTIONS: Map of ETBU // Google Start at ETBU
MARSHALL, TEXAS: Downtown Main Street (Facebook) // Chamber of Commerce //

MARSHALL, Texas – A new chapter in East Texas Baptist University athletics will take place on Saturday afternoon in Ornelas Gym. The Tigers will be hosting their first acrobatics and tumbling meet facing Baylor University who has won the last three NCATA (National Collegiate Acrobatics & Tumbling Association) at 4:00 p.m.

Acrobatics & Tumbling is a brand new collegiate sport that was started in 2011 and is the combination of gymnastics and competitive cheer that gives more female athletes to compete at the collegiate level. There are six events that teams are judged on in the meet starting with compulsory, acro, pyramid, toss, tumbling, and team event. Currently, there are 24 programs competing in 2019 with two more additions for 2020.

In June 2017, ETBU announced the addition of the new sport that would be led by Farrah Dunaway. ETBU became only the second university in Texas to add the new sport behind Baylor University. This new sport has been added all over the United States by programs that are NCAA Division I to NAIA. It is not an emerging sport or a part of the NCAA Championships yet but the vision for A&T is to become a NCAA sport.

Dunaway, who has a competitive cheer background, enjoys what this sport brings to the collegiate level for female athletes. She says, "I love that this sport will give the female athlete another choice to participate in at the collegiate level. This sport will let competitive cheerleaders and gymnasts from the high school level to have another option when they are looking into collegiate competition. I also love that this sport isn't just restricted to one area of athlete and I can take athletes from other sports and build something great with them. This sport is not just one area of discipline that these athletes are coming from but they are coming from artistic gymnastics and acrobats and powerlifting. I have athletes on my team that played basketball and softball. This is a great celebration of female athletes in general coming together making something really glorious with this new discipline."

ETBU team is comprised of 17 female student-athletes from all over Texas along with a member from Oklahoma and Puerto Rico. Their backgrounds vary from cheer, gymnastics, soccer, softball and basketball. Freshman Hailey Strole (Tomball, TX), Yasmin Hamilton (Parker, TX), Valeria Machuca (Puerto Rico), and Alexxys Britton (Stillwater, OK) all bring gymnastics and cheer backgrounds to the team. Strole, Hamilton, and Machuca all have artistic gymnastic backgrounds while Britton comes from the All-Star cheer area. Fallon Hilliard (Dodd City, TX) was a part of ETBU's women's basketball team last season that won the American Southwest Conference tournament championship while Ariana Lopez (Corpus Christi, TX) originally came to ETBU to play softball.

The task of putting a new program together and bonding them is always hard. Dunaway started early in the fall shaping her team to come together with various team bonding events. One major team bonding event took place in Diana, Texas, at Thomas Falls Outdoor and Adventure Event Center. In this bonding event, the team had to participate in a 2K mud run and compete as two teams. They had two objectives – to compete against the other team for a win and they couldn't leave any team member behind.

"This was a great bonding event for our team. During this race, this team was faced with challenges of heights, endurance, problem solving, and emotional issues. It took them about an hour to finish and it was fun to watch the process as these athletes that you thought were fearless on the mat are having a hard time with parts of the mud run. They faced these fears together as a team and grew closer through that hour," said Dunaway. "When this team faces obstacles and challenges this year, they can look back at that moment in the fall when they helped each other over the obstacles they faced during the mud run. All of it is a shared experience and shared challenge they will remember."

One of the first challenges comes in a big way hosting their inaugural meet as their first meet ever as a program and facing an elite program in Baylor University. Baylor, under the guidance of Felecia Mulkey, has won the last three NCATA national championships and is preseason #1 in the latest poll. Mulkey has been a pioneer for A&T helping promote the sport nationally and won seven national championships overall. She spent five years at the University of Oregon and won four national championships there before coming to Baylor and making them into an A&T powerhouse.

"It's because of Mulkey that we have A&T at ETBU. She and her staff has taken me under their wings and helped mold me and guide me into this foundational process at ETBU. They are fun to watch. Everything about them is so elite and it's fun to watch their discipline, focus, and execution," says Dunaway.

Dunaway has also had the chance to learn more about the sport from other coaches, too, that have guided her in this new process. "Oregon and Hawaii Pacific have also been very helpful as well in guiding me to building a program," says Dunaway.

"Having Baylor on campus, putting my team aside, will be really great for the sport so people to really see how cool this sport is and intense and discipline it is," Dunaway says.

Saturday will mark a historic moment for ETBU with the start of this new sport in Marshall. Dunaway says about the challenge against Baylor, "I have taught my athletes to have a faceless opponent. I want my team to compete against Baylor as they would against any other program because their focus is execution, mental toughness, synchronization, and to do what they have been trained to do and not worry about who you are competing against. I am really excited to watch that happen."

ETBU's meet against Baylor University will start at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday at 4:00 p.m. and is free admission.