Making Black history in NCAA gymnastics

Long before the successes of Haleigh Bryant and Trinity Thomas and the existence of HBCU programs Fisk and Talladega, Black NCAA gymnasts fought battle after battle to earn the recognition they deserved.

In 1987, was the first Black gymnast to win an NCAA individual title, doing so on floor. It wasn’t until 1989 that a Black woman won the NCAA individual all-around title, when Georgia’s Corrinne Tarver accomplished the feat.

“Going into the meet, that had been my goal,” Tarver said. “Well, going to college that had been my goal, and I really did feel (ready). The meet was at Georgia, so I was at home, and I felt like, ‘This is the perfect setup. This is the perfect moment for something like this to happen.’ … I knew I was top three. I didn’t know I won until I was standing in the tunnel, and they were bringing people in, and that’s when my coach told me, and I’m like, ‘Are you serious? Really?’”

However, since Tarver’s landmark accomplishment, only five other Black women have reached that same peak, highlighting the sport’s ongoing struggle with diversity. Though things are much different than when Tarver first started out as a gymnast, she – and others in the sport – believe there is still a long way to go.

Corrinne Tarver | University of Georgia

Born in the late 1960s, Tarver didn’t begin competitive gymnastics until eighth grade. Until then, it was a hobby that she was encouraged to pursue. At the time, there were very few Black girls and women competing, especially at the highest levels of the sport, for her or any other young Black girls to look up to.

“When I first started gymnastics, there was no diversity really,” Tarver said. “I always say all the time, there was a handful of us. We all knew each other. Our parents knew each other. Our families knew each other. When we went to meets, our families would connect. If one of us, our parents didn’t go to the meet, then the others’ parents were basically surrogate parents for us at the competition, whether it’s yelling and screaming and being that fan and cheering section for us.”

Eventually, Tarver moved to a gym in Yonkers, New York, where she saw more diversity both inside and outside the training facility. In her mind, having four or five Black gymnasts who trained together and all competed at level nine or above was huge, and a rarity compared to other gyms in the mid-1980s.

Competing on the elite circuit, Tarver was exposed to a host of other experiences that defined who she is now. Some of these experiences helped shape her perspective on diversity in the sport, indirectly leading to her becoming the head coach of the inaugural HBCU gymnastics program at Fisk. One of the most formative experiences, however, was something she witnessed rather than experienced herself.

“I think that the moment was Dianne Durham in the ‘84 Olympic trials,” Tarver said. “And I just remember watching what happened to her and the fact that they didn’t fight for her to be on the team. If you’re trying to put the best team out there, you should put the best gymnasts out there, and you should not leave one of your best gymnasts off because of a technicality.

“That, to me, was pretty much like, if she had been white, would it have been different? Would the results have been different? If she had been US champion and she was white, would things have gone the same way? And I don’t know the answer to that. I can’t say yes. I’m not going to go there, but for me, that was like a defining moment.”

Three years later, Tarver began exploring her options at the collegiate level. Although the bond she felt with then-Georgia Head Coach Suzanne Yoculan drove Tarver to Athens, there were other southern schools that she refused to explore due to the surrounding area. In fact, Georgia’s proximity to nearby Atlanta helped ease Tarver’s concerns about being in a southern environment in the late 1980s.

In 1989, Tarver reached the pinnacle of collegiate gymnastics, winning the NCAA all-around title, and becoming the first Black woman to do so. That same year, she and Hamilton stood atop the podium as co-floor champions. However, it wasn’t until years later she realized the weight of those titles and the significance they held.

“That wasn’t something that people grasped on (to) and said, ‘Hey, this was a moment in Black history,’” Tarver said. “It was years later that it was like, ‘Oh, a moment in Black history.’ But it wasn’t like that. Now, soon as Fisk stepped on the floor, it’s celebrated. Back then, it was like we did that, and it was maybe 15 years later, it’s celebrated what we did. So I don’t know. It was so different back then how they signified and how they celebrated the accomplishments of a Black gymnast.”

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With her success, Tarver inspired a new wave of Black girls to take up the sport. Meanwhile, Black athletes already in the sport continued to make their marks. In 1990, another Black gymnast, Alabama’s Dee Foster, took home the all-around title. Georgia’s Agina Simpkins became the first Black woman to win the bars title in 1993, while Andreé Pickens (now Houston) became the first to do so on beam in 1999. In the all around, however, it was 11 years after Foster that another Black woman claimed the top prize.

Onnie Willis-Rogers | UCLA

Onnie Willis (now Rogers) started gymnastics at a more traditional age. At three years old, family and friends recognized that her unlimited energy could be used more productively, recommending she take up gymnastics. Coming of age in the sport in the ‘90s, Rogers took inspiration from stars like Dominique Dawes, Betty Okino, and Stella Umeh.

Being from the West Coast, Rogers dreamed of competing at UCLA, and in 2000, her dream came to fruition. Lots of UCLA’s qualities stood out to Rogers, such as its proximity to her hometown, Tacoma, Washington, the fact that she had family in California, and the program’s head coach at the time, Valorie Kondos Field. UCLA was also Rogers’ top choice for what it was not.

“I did visit another university that was predominantly white in a predominantly white space, and I would have been the first Black gymnast on their team,” Rogers said. “When I went on the recruitment visit, this was something I think they thought would be a good recruitment tool, and it was very disturbing, even as like, a 17-year-old, and I could tell, and I knew it came from a very good place and they were trying to be aware. … But I was like, ‘This is so weird. I do not want to be in a space where I am so obviously the only.’

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“UCLA was sort of a forerunner, if you will, in diverse gymnasts. Like, that was the team that had brown girls, that had girls of color that sort of represented some of the diversity. They were the forerunners in terms of programs to have more than one or two non-white gymnasts competing.”

Rogers won the NCAA all-around title in 2001 as a sophomore. Similarly to Tarver, she was the first gymnast from her school’s program to win the individual championship. Similarly for Rogers, the magnitude of her title win went unrecognized by her until years later.

“I don’t think it’s something that really hit me or settled in until a few years later,” Rogers said. … (I’ve) moved on from the sport and have sort of been outside of gymnastics for a while and been able to have a sort of broader view on the sport and reflection on the sport that it really has settled like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty shocking in many ways to think that just in the 2000s I was among the first,’ and I think today, I’m one of six Black gymnasts who have won the individual all-around title across the history of NCAA championships. That, too, is still sort of striking, so there’s a lot of progress, and also, it’s like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty significant, in some ways, how slow that is.’”

Ashley Miles Greig | Alabama

Around the same time, Willis’ career on the West Coast started winding down, Ashley Miles Greig was just getting started in Tuscaloosa.

Influenced by a rerun of Mary Lou Retton’s performance in the 1984 Olympics, Miles Greig began emulating Retton’s moves and begging her parents to start gymnastics. They finally obliged as a surprise for her sixth birthday.

Her experience differed greatly from many others in the sport; she grew up competing under a Black head coach, Michael Harris, at Harris Unlimited Gymnastics School. Miles Greig says that protected her, in a way, from some negative experiences, but not all.

“I think that it was helpful to have that stability and that extra layer of protection,” Miles Greig said. “I think I really was, between my parents and my coaches, protected from a lot of things. But even the fact that my coach was Black, I think some of that other stuff still creeps in… It’s one of those memories that will never leave me. … The girls, our team from the gym, got invited to do the Nutcracker one year, and they invited everybody but me, and the reason being that ‘Well, we don’t really have anything for her.’ So think about being a young kid and hearing that and having to fight that battle and accept that and deal with that.”

When the time came, Miles Greig made her way to Alabama, where she excelled. On the competition floor, her achievements were lauded, earning her the 2006 Honda Award for the best collegiate gymnast in the country. Miles Greig was voted the award winner over Courtney Kupets, Ashley Postell, and Kate Richardson, who Miles Greig thought was surely going to take home the award.

“Knowing that it was voted on, they had that discussion, and they decided that I earned that award, as a Black gymnast, to be celebrated in that way, it was an honor,” Miles Greig said. “And it was a very memorable moment for me to be recognized in that way, in the sport of gymnastics.”

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Each of these women, and so many more, contributed to gymnastics through their accomplishments and the numerous national awards and prizes they won. LSU’s Lloimincia Hall (now Harris), however, didn’t reach the same national spotlight through winning NCAA titles. Despite that, her influence on the sport at the college level is seen every week when a gymnast performs a high-energy floor routine with lots of dancing, fun, and personality.

Lloimincia Hall-Harris | LSU

Harris, born in 1993, looked up to Miles Greig during her formative years as a gymnast and was motivated by her to pursue the sport collegiately. Similarly to Miles Greig, Harris grew up in Texas and found her home at LSU, an SEC school.

Although most of the other Black athletes Harris interacted with played other sports, she still found community in the diverse state of Louisiana.

“I would say the decision to go to LSU has a lot to do for me in terms of diversity,” Harris said. “What Louisiana was known for, understanding that there was a lot of diversity outside of the team.… I think the aspect of that is it was Louisiana, not so much as LSU gymnastics.”

In Baton Rouge, it didn’t take long for Harris to make her mark. In her freshman season, she came in with the idea of doing something different and followed through on it by working with Volunteer Assistant Coach Ashleigh Clare-Kearney.

Each year at LSU, Harris’ routines varied thematically. As a freshman, it was all about drums. In her sophomore year, her music contained a medley of gospel songs. Her junior year music utilized the old school “African American family reunion” classics, and to cap off her career, Harris’ final routine in 2015 was a tribute to the state of Louisiana.

“Ultimately, I was all about a theme and trying to do something different, but at the end of the day, not forgetting that I’m still African American, not forgetting that I’m going to play a difference,” Harris said. “I’m going to get the same 10.0 score, but ultimately, I am going to show our culture, and I’m not going to run away from it.”

Harris stands as a trailblazer who introduced a new way of expression through the sport of gymnastics. Her tagline of ‘Dare to be Different’ paved the way for her to become one of the first NCAA gymnasts to go viral for a routine and to be celebrated for her performance and her presence, not just her accomplishments.

“You want to leave a mark, then do something that somebody else hasn’t done,” Harris said. “And that was kind of where I was, that no matter the accolades, no matter if I didn’t get anything to my name, I wanted to say ‘Okay, well (Lloimincia) is done. The aspect of she left a mark that is so unique, that others can follow it,’ and I think being the first to ever go viral for college gymnastics, I’m happy to hold that title.”

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Black women are integral to NCAA gymnastics history despite so few finding the proper circumstances to succeed. Since the times when Tarver, Rogers, Miles Greig, and Harris competed, many more Black girls have found their way into the sport and stayed in it.

At the elite level, gymnasts like Simone Biles, Shilese Jones, and Skye Blakely are making their mark and are in the hunt to represent the United States at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. In the NCAA, Thomas holds a plethora of scoring records. Bryant just became the 14th gymnast ever to compete in a gym slam, and up-and-coming competitors like eMjae Frazier, Selena Harris, and Konnor McClain have already accomplished some impressive feats.

“It’s so beautiful to see now and the diversity that’s across the sport and across universities,” Rogers said. “My daughter…does gymnastics as well now, and we went to a college meet last year, and I was dumbfounded. It was a quad meet, so there were four teams, and I’m looking around it was like, brown girls everywhere. Every team has multiple Black (and) brown gymnasts.”

Rogers, now an associate professor of psychology at Northwestern, studies race and evaluates its role in one’s identity and youth development daily in her career field. Relating what she’s studied to the sport she loves, she notes that the difference in today’s world is striking.

“It’s just a completely different world, honestly. … And it’s not just a little bit. It’s significant. Both from the club level to the elite level to college, at every level, you’re seeing that diverse representation, and that they’re dominating and winning, and we’re everywhere and integrated as opposed to sort of the select or the exceptional. … It’s also about sort of reimagining who gets to do gymnastics more broadly. … Everything has been shifting and opening and moving beyond this sort of narrow, prescribed limited view of what it means to be a gymnast.”

However, even with the progress made, there is still a long way to go. For a long time, Black gymnasts were seen as only being powerful and deemed to excel on vault and floor. To this day, only 10 Black athletes have won NCAA titles on beam or bars, with Houston being a title winner on both. Yet, Black gymnasts at all levels have repeatedly disproved that stereotype by succeeding in all events.

“There are Black gymnasts that are powerful. Some Black gymnasts are not, that rely on the gracefulness or more flexibility, to get their bonus in their gymnastics,” Miles Greig said. “So I like the fact that that is sort of changing and that I would hope that more people, moving forward, even commentating, just say what you see. You don’t have to make it one way or the other, like all Black gymnasts are not exotic-looking. We’re just gymnasts.”

Harris spoke similarly, “So the aspect of that is yes, we can be powerful, but yes, we can be graceful. Yes, we can swing and do amazing bars, but yes, we also can kill it on the floor. So I think the aspect of that, of seeing that, is so beautiful. It almost brings tears to (my) eyes to think about how far we have come to be the one that’s the best in the world is African American … and to be the best in the world, you have to be best on all four events.”

These four women have gone down different paths since their time in the NCAA. Tarver and Miles Greig are two of the six Black collegiate head coaches. They get the chance to work directly with the next generation of Black gymnasts, teaching them valuable life lessons both inside and outside of the gym. But they’ve all shaped the history of collegiate gymnastics in some way through their accomplishments or a precedent they set.

“I think the legacy that I would like someone or anyone to remember me as, I go back to the statement of dare to be different,” Harris said. “Understanding, doing something, make a statement, tell a story. You get four years in college to tell a story. What is your story? You get a blank canvas when you get on campus. What is your story, and make it count.”