get these nets
Veteran
Fisk University became the first HBCU to compete in NCAA gymnastics this week
Jan 6, 2023
Jordynn Cromartie entered her senior year of high school facing a daunting choice, one countless other Black gymnasts have faced for decades.
The teenager from Houston wanted to attend a historically Black college or university. And she wanted to compete in the sport she's dedicated most of her life to.
One problem. She knew she couldn't do both, something Cromartie brought up over Thanksgiving dinner while talking to her uncle, Frank Simmons, a member of the Board of Trustees at Fisk University, a private HBCU of around 1,000 students in Nashville, Tennessee.
“He and my aunt were like, ‘Oh you haven’t made a decision, you should come to Fisk,’” Cromartie said. “I’m like, ‘Well, they don’t have a gymnastics team.’ To go to a college that doesn’t have what I would be working for forever was crazy to me.”
Simmons, stunned, made a promise to his niece.
“Watch,” he told her. “I'll make it happen."
He wasn't kidding
In the span of a few weeks, Simmons connected Derrin Moore — the founder of Atlanta-based Brown Girls Do Gymnastics, an organization that'd been trying to drum up support for an HBCU for years — with Fisk's trustees. One trustee listened to Moore's pitch and offered to make a $100,000 donation on the spot if Fisk adopted the sport.
And seemingly in a flash, all the roadblocks and misconceptions Moore had encountered while spending the better part of a decade trying to persuade an HBCU to take the leap on an increasingly diverse sport evaporated.
On Friday afternoon at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas, barely 14 months after Fisk committed to building a program from the ground up, Cromartie — now a freshman at her uncle's alma mater — and the rest of her teammates will make history when they become the first HBCU to participate in an NCAA women's gymnastics meet. The Bulldogs will compete against Southern Utah, North Carolina and Washington as part of the inaugural Super 16, an event that also includes perennial NCAA powers like Oklahoma, UCLA and Michigan.
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The Sports Twist
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