ACROBATICS & TUMBLING

GANNON GOLDEN KNIGHTS AT NCATA CHAMPIONSHIPS

WHEN: Thursday-Sunday

WHERE: Academic, Sports and Recreation Complex (ASRC) | West Liberty, W.Va.

CHAMPIONSHIP CENTRAL PAGE

SCHEDULE
Thursday
Quarterfinals
10:30 a.m.: No. 3 Azusa Pacific vs. No. 6 Limestone
1:30 p.m.: No. 2 Oregon vs. No. 7 Frostburg State             
4:30 p.m.: No. 1 Baylor vs. No. 8 Fairmont State
7:00 p.m.: No. 4 Quinnipiac vs. No. 5 Gannon
LIVE VIDEO: ESPN+ ($)
 
Friday
Semifinal schedules
4:30 p.m.: Azusa Pacific-Limestone winner vs. Oregon-Frostburg State winner
7:00 p.m.: Baylor-Fairmont State winner vs. Quinnipiac-Gannon winner
 
Saturday
National championship
5 p.m.: Semifinal winners
 
Sunday
11 a.m.: Event finals


 
GANNON SET FOR NATIONALS

WEST LIBERTY, W.Va. – One year after finishing as the national runner-up, the Gannon University acrobatics & tumbling team will aim for an National Collegiate Acrobatics & Tumbling Association Championships beginning Thursday.

West Liberty University will host the four-day event at the Academic, Sports and Recreation Complex starting with the four quarterfinals on Thursday.

Gannon, which finished 6-2 in the regular season, enters this year's meet as the NCATA's No. 5 seed. The Golden Knights will face No. 4 Quinnipiac in the fourth quarterfinal at 7 p.m.

The winner of that matchup is likely to get a showdown with the No. 1 seed and seven-time defending national champion Baylor, which faces No. 8 Fairmont State in the quarterfinals.

Quinnipiac enters the championships with a 5-1 record, with the only loss coming against Baylor. The Bobcats advanced to the NCATA semifinals in 2022 before losing to Baylor.

QUINNIPIAC-GANNON HISTORY

The Golden Knights and Bobcats have a recent history against each other.

Gannon beat Quinnipiac twice during the 2022 regular season, defeating the Bobcats 266.955-262.235 during a tri-meet at Quinnipiac and 280.660-271.815 at the Highmark Events Center.

Gannon was scheduled to face Quinnipiac in 2020 and 2021, but those meets were canceled both years because of COVID-19.
 

FIRST FOR HEAD COACH

Brandy Duren is in her first season as Gannon's head coach, and this is her first time leading a team into the NCATA Championships as a head coach.

"I'm really excited. It is definitely going to be a new experience. I've never been a head coach at the national championships," Duren said. "So, this is a first time for me, but I don't think I could do it with any other team than Gannon with any other athletes than who are on my team. They've been nothing but supportive and empowering for me, especially with doing it without an assistant coach that's full time. A lot of my student coaches have come together to help me out."

Duren does have championship experience. She was the GU assistant coach when former head coach Jacquie Eshleman led Gannon to a berth in the 2022 NCATA championship.

She also competed in the NCATA Championships as an athlete when she was a top for the University of Oregon.





 

DECORATED KNIGHTS

Gannon already has had a good week going into Nationals as four of its top student-athletes received national recognition.

On Monday, senior base/tumbler Sammy Gouge (Midland, Mich./Bullock Creek) and top/tumbler Ali Price (New Paris, Pa./Chestnut Ridge) were named to the NCATA All-America Team. A day earlier, Gouge was named the Team MVP.

Also on Monday, senior Sydney Hess (Manalapan, N.J./Manalapan) was one of eight athletes nationwide to be selected to the NCATA All-Academic Team. Meanwhile, Gannon led the nation with 38 student-athletes on the NCATA Academic Honor Roll.

On Tuesday, sophomore top Ty Upton (South Amboy, N.J./St. Thomas Aquinas) was named the NCATA Division II Specialist of the Year.
 
EVENT CHAMPIONSHIPS

Gannon is one of eight teams participating in the quarterfinals, but the Golden Knights are also top contenders for several individual event finals on Sunday. The Knights are the defending national champions in three events: synchronized pyramid, synchronized toss, and open toss.

Many of Gannon's athletes who participated in those events are back this season, so the Knights look poised to make a run at more event titles. Gannon is considered to be one of the NCATA's elite teams in the toss and pyramid events and has garnered high scores all season.

"I think we're definitely the strongest in our tosses and in our pyramids. Those have been consistently high scores for us, especially our duo toss and duo pyramid," Duren said. "I think because those are synchronized heats, those are usually more difficult to score high in in our sport. But I think that our team does a really good job of scoring well in those synchronized rounds."

Duren said one of the team's training focuses leading up to Nationals has been working on the acro portion of the meet.

"We've been putting a lot of work into our acro events in the past couple of weeks since our last home meet on April 7 at Presbyterian," she said. "So, I'm hoping that hard work will be seen on Day 1 and we can qualify for some acro events for event finals as well."

 

 GANNON'S SEASON

The Knights enter with a 6-2 record and have faced three of the teams that qualified for the quarterfinals.

Gannon lost to No. 6 Limestone 270.269-265.045 in its season opener in a meet that was marked by several GU point deductions for clerical mishaps.

During its spring break trip, Gannon competed against No. 2 Oregon and No. 3 Azusa Pacific. The Knights lost to Oregon 257.05-253.74 but edged Azusa 265.630-265.305.

All three of those teams are on the opposite side of the NCATA quarterfinal bracket from Gannon.

Gannon has not faced Quinnipiac or Baylor since last year.

The Knights have one small advantage in that they already have competed at West Liberty's Academic, Sports and Recreation Complex this season. On Feb. 14, they defeated the Hilltoppers 265.480-247.165, so the Golden Knights have experience at the venue where they will compete this weekend.

Duren said Gannon's goal will be the same against Quinnipiac as it would if the Knights advance to the semifinals or championship.

"Really our goal for every meet is to just do the best we can, execute the best that we've executed, have no mistakes in any of our events, and to have our best meets of the season," she said. "We want to peak at the national championships."

CALMING EFFECT

Duren called acrobatics & tumbling "a very, very precise sport." As a result, if athletes get too hyped up at the championship meet, it can be a disadvantage. As a result, coaches attempt to keep the competitors on an even keel.

"The challenge of a coach is to try to identify ways to keep them calm, cool, and collected under pressure and do nothing more or nothing less than what they normally do," Duren said. "That is hard because you do have this natural adrenaline, which makes you do things harder and faster, and stronger.

"But calming your breathing and your mind and relaxing and just feeling really confident and secure in your skills is just something that we've been trying to work on to get to a point where they can just relax, and it can kind of be second nature to them."

Gannon's athletes will also have to remain focused as they wait to compete at West Liberty. The Knights practice on Wednesday and will then wait to compete in the last of the four quarterfinals on Thursday.

 

The Gannon University acrobatics & tumbling team is off to Nationals, but before the Golden Knights left for West Virginia, they had a battle cry, led by Lauren Arroyo (West Covina, Calif./Mater Dei) and Sammy Gouge (Midland, Mich./Bullock Creek).
Go, Knights! Bring home an NCATA team title!@GannonU @theNCATA pic.twitter.com/bbBtmrU4gq

— Gannon Athletics (@GUKnights) April 25, 2023

GU'S LINEUP
 
Gannon's competitive roster for Thursday's quarterfinals:

Lauren Arroyo (West Covina, Calif./Mater Dei)
Layna Bergeron (Johnston, R.I./La Salle Academy) 
Sophie Binsol (Waldorf, Md./Westlake)
Kylie Brown (Virginia Beach, Va./Salem)
Annie Colantonio (Pittsburgh, Pa./Bishop Canevin)
Charisma Felix (Las Vegas, Nev./College of So. Nevada High School West)
Lillie Fritz (Chandler, Ariz./Chandler) 
Morgan Gilbert (Black River, N.Y./Immaculate Heart Central)
Sammy Gouge (Midland, Mich./Bullock Creek) 
Sydney Hess (Manalapan, N.J./Manalapan)
Mikayla Kis (Halton Hills, Ontario, Canada/Silverthorn Collegiate Institute) 
Michaelah Lanza (Middletown, N.J./Middletown North)
Montana Muller (Catasauqua, Pa./Catasauqua)
Peyton Oliver (Vallejo, Calif./Jesse M. Bethel)
Maddie Olsen (Phoenix, Ariz./Chandler Prep)
Maria Ondrejko (Scenery Hill, Pa./Bishop Canevin) 
Nicole Pavia (Oxford, Conn./Oxford High)
Ali Price (New Paris, Pa./Chestnut Ridge) 
Jema Reasoner (Collierville, Tenn./Collierville)
Kat Rodriguez (Rockwall, Texas/Rockwall) 
Courtney Solensky (Columbia, Conn./E.O. Smith) 
Tori Soper (Sheffield Lake, Ohio/Ohio Connections Academy) 
Alexis Tosado (Sparks, Nev./Edward C. Reed)
Ty Upton (South Amboy, N.J./St. Thomas Aquinas)
McKenna Wettstein (Moorhead, Minn./Moorhead) 
Suzy Whiteman (Delmont, Pa./Franklin Regional) 
Emma Winters (Shelby Township, Mich./Eisenhower High)
Addy Womeldorph (Parker, Texas/Allen)