On April 26, 2024, then-No. 2 Quinnipiac acrobatics and tumbling fell one meet short of making the national championship — losing to then-No. 3 Gannon by 1.2 points.

Though the Bobcats fell short in the team portion, they secured two individual national titles, with back Summer Knoell ‘24 winning the six-element pass and the open pyramid heat.

In the open pyramid, junior top/base Alyssa Dillon, junior base Hallie Fowler, senior Kaya Clark, graduate student base Bri Marks and senior base Tiffany Zieba worked together to obtain the title.

Quinnipiac hasn’t made the national championship since 2018, a long time for a team that is seen as the powerhouse in the sport. The Bobcats sit at No. 2 in the NCATA polls behind nine-times straight national champions Baylor University. But for head coach Mary Ann Powers, the rankings don’t mean much.

“We’ve got the No. 2 thing,” Powers said. “I’m not a real big fan of polls, to be honest; I just kind of felt a little silly. I want my kids to know that we’re gunning for the top every single practice. That’s where we’re going.”

The Bobcats lost over 10 players last season, including two NCATA All-Americans in Zieba and senior top Lydnsey Rudoph, but Powers was able to turn around and bring in 12 freshmen to fill in those gaps.

“They definitely want the same goals as us, and I think they look up to us in that sense,” junior top/tumbler Katherine Carter said. “So they see us succeed in that area, so they want to as well.”

Freshmen often need time to settle moving to a new team and sport, but for the ones on Quinnipiac acrobatics and tumbling, it’s the opposite.

“We’ve had some unfortunate injuries, so it took my bench away,” Powers said. “In extraordinary times when something like that happens, that’s when you take an individual like a first-year and you go ‘I wasn’t expecting to need her to do this.’ Do I get to go over to her now and say, ‘We kind of need to talk about this now and see if a person can take something that’s already inside of them and step up.’”

But the freshmen have been thrown into the fire and have produced, with the Bobcats starting the year 2-0 and Powers hasn’t let their performances go unnoticed in just the short season.

“It’s (freshman top/tumbler) Julia Turrisi she comes from competitive cheers; she had to learn a brand new sport, as all of them do. She’s ready to go,” Powers said on Feb. 2. “Just so many of them, honestly, (freshman top/tumbler) Morgan Pektor and (freshman base/tumbler) Olivia (Robins,) they were both great.”

After defeating Morgan State and Iona to start the year, Quinnipiac sits at 2-0 for the third-straight season. Its first meet against the Bears featured its highest point total — 270.565 — for a season opener for the team since 2018 against Baylor when it scored 278.055. 

“The first meet went really well for us,” Dillon said. “I think it was a really good confidence builder for our team. We did have those injuries, but he did a great job in that first meet, and I can’t wait to watch us grow from there.”

In the individual events, two athletes stood out in junior base Gabriella Pierce and Carter. They were the top scorers for the Bobcats in the six-element pass in their opening meets. Pierce scored a 9.825 against Morgan State and a 9.70 in the six-element passes. Carter, however, did her work in the aerial portion, scoring 9.60 to power the Bobcats to start 2-0.

Quinnipiac will look to continue its dominance with six more meets until the national championships, with half of them — St. Leo, Limestone and AIC — being first-time opponents. This change has gone hand in hand with the evolution of acrobatics and tumbling as a sport.

The NCATA celebrates its 15th season in 2025 expanding to 55 teams — spanning Division I, Division II, Division III and NAIA — from its inaugural six teams back in 2010. The six teams included Quinnipiac along with Azusa Pacific University, Baylor University, Fairmont State University, University of Maryland and the University of Oregon.

The sport is still growing too, adding three more teams, Canisius, Manhattan and Wheeling University into the mix for the 2026 season. The team’s roster may take some time to meet the numbers the Bobcats have, but the growth of the sport is most important.

“I’ve got 35 warriors, and they have 10, so they can only compete in seven of the 20 heats,” Powers said. “I put myself in the shoes of my opponents, and I go, ‘Wow, this is hard for them.’ What I try to do the night before the game is make them feel really welcome and comfortable and tell them they’re helping to grow our sport.”

Quinnipiac will need to go the extra mile to pull to a national championship, and there’s one thing they harp on.

“When we really have confidence in each other and ourselves, we really do our best,” Dillon said. “I think that’s the main goal this year is to have no regrets.”