Baylor All-American to take on former team as Augustana’s coach of emerging sport

By Mick Garry, for Pigeon605

There will be several tried-and-true traditional sports story angles at play Saturday when the Baylor University acrobatics and tumbling team travels from Texas to Sioux Falls to play Kaelyn Cowan’s Augustana Vikings at the Elmen Center.

Let’s ignore for a moment that not every sports fan in the area is familiar with acrobatics and tumbling – known as “acro” to those who follow it closely – or that this increasingly popular sport is expanding opportunities for student-athletes by the year.

Instead, let’s focus on how this matchup offers up intriguing context that any fan of any sport can understand.

Cowan, who started the Vikings’ acrobatics and tumbling program in 2022, will lead the No. 13 Vikings against No. 1 Baylor, which is led by Cowan’s former coach and mentor, Felecia Mulkey. Mulkey is considered the sport’s most successful coach in history. Cowan referred to her as acrobatics and tumbling’s “James Naismith,” alluding to the man who invented basketball.

“She came to Baylor my sophomore season, and we won three national championships with her as my coach,” Cowan said. “Coach Mulkey and a small group of women – there were six schools across the country – started the sport because they saw a need for more opportunities at the collegiate level for athletes who were coming from artistic gymnastics, competitive cheerleading and acrobatic gymnastics. They saw the need and went on this journey.”

Cowan is now part of that journey at Augustana, where she oversees a program of 37 athletes from all around the country – including several from South Dakota.

A two-time All-American at Baylor, Cowan graduated in 2017.  She made a stop at West Virginia Wesleyan as a graduate assistant and then became a head coach at Limestone University in South Carolina for a year before returning to her alma mater as an assistant in 2019. She was on the staff for Baylor’s 2021 national championship, then was named coach of the Vikings shortly thereafter.

 It wouldn’t have happened without the coach who will be her opponent Saturday.

“Midway through my first season as an athlete at Baylor, I knew this is what I want to do,” Cowan said. “I was definitely a young coach, but the sport was so new and growing so fast. Then I got to learn from Coach Mulkey again as an assistant. This sport has taken me around the country, and I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world.”

Geography was not going to stand in the way of that kind of commitment and enthusiasm, so when this native of Hewitt, Texas, was presented with an opportunity to start an acrobatics and tumbling program at a respected school in faraway Sioux Falls, she did not hesitate.

 Augustana announced in November 2020 that the university would be adding acrobatics and tumbling to its athletic program. Acro had “emerging sport” status with the NCAA and had 36 schools offering it nationwide at the time.

In July 2021, the Vikings announced they had hired Cowan to direct the program. What came next started with the staunch support of Augustana leadership but was otherwise a blank slate.

An awaiting adventure, in other words. Cowan quickly began directing a nationwide recruiting effort and put together a schedule for the spring of 2023. Every step of the way, she also would emphasize educating all those who were curious about this new sport but didn’t know exactly what it was.

In some instances, that included the athletes themselves.

“We have two athletes that came from acrobatic and tumbling youth programs, which is awesome because they do have a little more knowledge coming in,” Cowan said. “But it’s not as big yet as the artistic gymnastics pool of high school athletes or the competitive cheerleading pool. A lot of these girls probably didn’t know a lot about the sport when we started recruiting them, but I do know they love it now.”

Reana Rost is a sophomore from nearby Madison who was part of the gymnastics program in high school. She had no plans to continue on as a college gymnast, but her grandmother saw an article that explained what Cowan and Augustana were planning to do. She passed it along, and Rost was intrigued.

“I read the story and reached out to Coach K, and we started the recruiting process from there,” Rost said. “When I came for my visit, I knew immediately this was where I wanted to go and that I wanted to be part of acrobatics and tumbling. It was such a special experience to be involved in the first year ever of the sport at Augustana. There were 24 of us, and from day one, Coach K was teaching us the basics. She led us to something great. Augustana is very lucky to have her.”

Kailee “Kay” Greene is a senior from Virginia who transferred to Augustana from Chowan University, where she earned second-team all-conference honors for another program that was just getting started at the time.

She was accustomed to “serious” coaches during her time in gymnastics, and Cowan was a little different in that regard.

“She’s easy to talk to,” Greene said. “It’s not like a friend level, but it’s at a level where you feel real comfortable talking to her. You get excited to go to practice because you know you’re going to do cool things. She’s had experience. That eases your mind because with this being a new sport, many coaches haven’t coached before. That experience makes everyone more at ease.”

The combination of new players and new coaches playing a new sport was bound to be difficult in some respects. No one tossed Cowan a guidebook and said “Do it like this.” She has gracefully navigated those challenges, however, as have the players.

“The thing I tell people about acro is that it’s all about trust,” Greene said. “If you don’t trust your teammates, you don’t have a team. You’re trusting people with your life, essentially, because you’re holding them above your head. … Without the trust we have with this team, it just wouldn’t be the same. I don’t think we would be as successful as we are if we weren’t really close.”

Measuring the success of Cowan’s efforts also can be confirmed by how quickly the Vikings have advanced to become a nationally recognized program. The fact that they’re facing Baylor, a Power 5 school with a strong tradition of funding all its athletics, offers further confirmation that the Vikings under Cowan’s leadership are headed in the right direction.

There is not a lot of history to catch up with in this sport, so Cowan and the Vikings, who are 4-1 and improving at every meet, will keep making it.

“We have made significant strides this year,” Cowan said. “Our last meet, we hit a high score for the program at 268. That’s cooking with grease up there with the big dogs. To do that with such a young team – well, I can’t wait to see what the rest of the season is like.”