By Keely Hasty
Triangle Contributor
Wingate has debuted its 25th NCAA-sanctioned sport this spring in the form of an acrobatics and tumbling team, an athletic competition that head coach Kandyce Blocker says has a unique edge that Bulldog fans will enjoy.
“The biggest milestone we will face is proving ourselves to the campus and the community around us,” said Blocker, who was previously an assistant coach at St. Leo in Florida before taking on the the challenge of bringing a new sport to the Wingate community.
Being the only full-time coach directing the new program—graduate student Alexis Forbes is her only assistant—Blocker has taken on building the team and its roster from scratch. She says it was challenging to get prospective student-athletes to buy into a program that had no pre-existing culture or current athletes to get to know. To provide guidance, Blocker reached out to the 45 other established NCAA programs in the sport and their head coaches.
“They always want to see all programs succeed,” Blocker said. “I can call other programs’ head coaches and ask for help. We have a mentor program to help first-time head coaches which has benefited me tremendously. We all want to grow together and stay together.”
Blocker was a four-year member of the acrobatics and tumbling team at Fairmont State in West Virginia. The Wingate athletic department targeted her because of her unique and extensive experience as both a student-athlete and coach in the growing sport. She says she came to the sport somewhat by accident.
“During my senior year of high school, I was in and out of the gymnastics world,” she told the Wingate athletics website at the time of her hiring. “I had attended Division 1 gymnastics camps, including one at the University of Maryland, but I had come to the realization that my gymnastics career was coming to an end and that I would need to try some different things, including competitive cheerleading.
“I found Fairmont State University in West Virginia on one of my searches. They offered competitive cheer and dance as well. I learned later they offered acrobatics and tumbling, which contains many different programs under one umbrella and, honestly, my acrobatics and tumbling career took off from this point.”
Most people aren’t familiar with the sport because it is still fairly new to college athletics, having only become sanctioned by the NCAA in 2020. It has been gaining popularity and expanding since then.
Many fans who are new to the sport often ask how it differs from cheerleading or gymnastics? Acro and tumbling teams feature aspects of both gymnastics and competitive cheerleading. There are up to 28 athletes on a roster, with each playing a role or position. Those positions include base, mid-layer, top and tumbler. Twenty-four hours before each meet, coaches must submit an outline of the routines their athletes will compete in the next day. Each meet lasts about two hours with six events and 20 heats throughout the events.
There are 20 women from 10 different states who comprise Blocker’s inaugural team. The Bulldogs won their opening meet of the season Feb. 10 against King, 227-165, before a boisterous crowd in Cuddy Arena. Since then, they’ve lost to Mars Hill on the road and Converse at home. Their next home meet is March 15 at Cuddy, where they’ll host Emmanuel and Belmont Abbey at 5 p.m. In all, Wingate will participate in seven meets this season.
The Bulldogs were accepted last year as an associate member in the sport by the Carolinas Conference, joining nine other Division 2 schools in the Carolinas that offer the sport, including South Atlantic Conference members Coker, Limestone and Mars Hill. Thirty-two of the 46 NCAA acrobatics and tumbling programs are Division 2 institutions.
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