EUGENE, OR (LOOTPRESS) – The number 7 Fairmont State Acrobatics & Tumbling team will compete against number 2 Azusa Pacific University at 4:30pm ET Thursday in a bid for the National Collegiate Acrobatics & Tumbling Association (NCATA) Championship.
The matchup will take place at the University of Oregon’s campus, and will see coverage on ESPN+, with finals for national individual events scheduled to be held the afternoon of Saturday, April 30.
The Fairmont Fighting Falcons have had a banner season, securing a third consecutive Mountain East Conference Championship earlier in the month, earning the team a coveted three-peat series of wins.
Coming off their April 9, 256.695 – 255.550 victory over Frostburg State University in the Mountain East Conference Championship, the Fighting Falcons will go into Thursday’s event with an impressive 9-1 record.
In addition to the season’s Mountain East Conference Championship, the team also brought home three individual titles, including event championships in quad tumbling, trio tumbling, and open tumbling.
Several members of the Fairmont State Acrobatics & Tumbling team are garnering national recognition individually as well, with junior Peyton Barnes seeing selection to the NCATA All-Academic Team. Barnes has managed to obtain a 3.97 GPA while keeping busy as a Fairmont State student ambassador, Treasurer and Domestic Violence Safety Coordinator for the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, 2021-2022 President of SAAC, and Treasurer for the Black Student Union. Barnes has made the University’s President’s List three times, and is a triple major at the school, working toward degrees in Political Science, Criminal Justice, and National Security & Intelligence.
Fifth-year senior at Fairmont State, Alexis Smith earned All-MEC First-Team honors and was named the Mountain East Conference Acrobatics & Tumbling Athlete of the Year, also earning the distinction of being named to the 2021 NCATA All-American Team.
Sophomore Reghan Mollahan was named 2021-2022 National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA) Collegiate All-American. “The main thing we are focused on is to go out and have the best meet of our season!,” says Mollahan in anticipation of the team’s upcoming matchup. “This is an experience of a lifetime, so taking it all in is really important to me.”
As seven-time quarterfinalists and one-time semi-finalists in the NCATA National Championships, this event will make the University team’s ninth event appearance.
Their opponents, the Azusa Pacific Cougars, came off a commendable season of their own, incurring only a single loss, notably at the hands of the University of Oregon following a March 25 matchup.
Oregon’s Matthew Knight Arena will host the second quarterfinal competition of the day, in which the Fighting Falcons will go up against the Pacific Cougars. The matchup will be broadcast on ESPN+ at 4:30pm ET. For more information on the championship event, visit the NCATA website here.