Bella Swarthout is older than her sport.
The 19-year-old Oregon athlete has been on Earth longer than acrobatics and tumbling has. One year ago, she had never competed in it. Her sport — the one that no one knows about — has led her across oceans. Now, she has a chance to stop and watch it rise.
Acrobatics and tumbling athletes come from a multitude of backgrounds. Before they compete, they must learn a new discipline — its minutia and its maxims. Swarthout came to Oregon in 2023 as an experienced gymnast. She lives now as a member of a Ducks program competing for national titles, and the past two years have been her journey between sports.
Hers is one of the few sports that doesn’t take advantage of the emerging weather in the Oregon spring. Dewy tarps come off the dirt at Jane Sanders Stadium and PK Park. Lacrosse opens up Papé Field next door. Not A&T: its athletes are tucked away inside Matthew Knight Arena, walking to their meet-day lunch as the sun streams through floor-to-ceiling windows and onto the floor.
On April 5, 2024, the focus was the Baylor Bears. At that point, they held each of the last eight national championships. Oregon welcomed them to town with a smile. “I think we’re going to go out there with confidence,” Swarthout said, framed against the sunlight. It’s what you do against a dynastic program, even when you’re nervous, like she can be.
She believes in this team, though. They’re strong, she says, and they’ve come together lately.
She has one goal when she steps on the mat: Don’t hold back.
Disciplined dancing ——————–
Most of the student-athletes Swarthout competes with have a background in a sport that they apply to acrobatics and tumbling. It’s no different for the sophomore.
“I was an artistic gymnast for seven years,” she explains as she wanders in and out of long rays of sunshine. “Like bars, beam, floor — all that.” Those are skills that you might see in the Olympics, but she’s applied them to this sport.
Acrobatics and tumbling draws athletes from multiple disciplines. There’s no real “youth league” for A&T — no high school competition. Instead, its athletes come from sports like competitive cheer (Baylor head coach Felecia Mulkey’s background), and acrobatic and artistic gymnastics. Since the sport took shape over a decade ago, details from each of those sports have worked their way into skills used by today’s programs.
Swarthout was an artistic gymnast until she turned 10 years old, when she moved gyms from her Paso Robles, CA. facility to one almost an hour away from home. There, she discovered acrobatic gymnastics.
She describes it as a partner sport — closer to what she does on the mat in Eugene — “but it’s more like a dance.” She competed with two teammates: a top (who would spin into the air with tosses), and a base-mid, who would create the top’s foundation alongside Swarthout.
It’s a dance that she swung to for the next eight years. She worked her way onto planes, far away from home. The first was to Dresden, Germany, where she represented the U.S. in the Zwinger Acro Cup, an international acrobatic gymnastic competition.
She wasn’t yet 16 when she stepped onto the mat across the ocean.
“I remember my top — she was extremely little at the time,” she said, “and I just remember us being so nervous and then finishing our routine.”
All she knew when she finished the balance routine was that their score would pop up in front of her trio. Months of preparation and scores flashed through her head — pop, pop, pop. She thought of her teammates, and of representing her country.
Almost 6,000 miles from Paso Robles, the score popped up in Dresden: 25.900. Silver. Her parents were there to see it.
Five seconds —————–
Swarthout knows something about being nervous. 11-year-old Bella visited a sports psychologist after she struggled amongst her coaches and teammates with an atmosphere she called “controlling.” Two things stuck with her when she walked out of that office and back into the gym.
The psychologist told her to imagine a bubble — any color she wanted (“I always picked rainbow.”). She could zip it up, and anything someone else said that could pile on the pressure would bounce right off. It still works.
She wanted to get out of her own brain. Being nervous for more than a minute made her get in her own way, she said. Her psychologist had something for that. She could take the time to feel that pressure on the edge of the mat, but just for five seconds. Any more, and she’ll overthink it. Then she could shake it out, and go.
Step up. Five seconds. Shake it out. Don’t hold back.
“At the end of the day,” she said, “we’re just here having fun.” It’s one of the key tenets of the sport, for her. You’ll see it, if you watch. In between events, Oregon breaks out the YMCA, or the Worm to break the tension. You can’t help but smile.
“You take it back to basics” —————-
Some athletes come from acrobatic or artistic gymnastics, like Swarthout, or even competitive cheerleading. It’s Taylor Susnara’s job to mold that into the new sport.
Oregon’s head coach explained that her staff molds their sport’s preseason training to each of their 50-plus athletes. When they arrive, they’re put on a path towards competitive proficiency based on their experience and background. They’ll start “pretty basic,” she said, and advance throughout the year in groups towards competition level in the spring.
For Swarthout, that was refresh and relearn. The then-freshman entered the program as a base-mid — a position focused on stability and power at the foundation of pyramids. She’ll balance tops in a hand-to-hand press that defies gravity. “You’ll never find me in the air,” she said. “I’ll get halfway up there, but I don’t tumble. I’m pretty ground-and-pound.”
She could adapt most of the acrobatic skills she’d been honing in the gym. “But then when we looked at the cheer stuff, I actually could not figure it out,” she said. Some of the skills that have become foundational in A&T come from coaches’ competitive cheer backgrounds.
It’s pretty similar for Mulkey when she walks into the gym in Waco.
“We bring them all to the same playing field,” the Baylor head coach said. It’s the body shaping and angles they can take from artistic gymnastics. They’ll steal the athleticism from cheer. Maybe sprinkle in the balance that seems innate to acrobatic gymnasts.
“You take it all the way back to basics,” she said.
Pay it off ——-
Susnara was still an athlete at Oregon when Swarthout was recruited as a high school junior.
She learned about the opportunity at hand. Both Oregon and Baylor reached out, but Eugene stood out. It was closer to home, and it had the experiences she’d missed out on in high school — like big-time sports games, she said. When she finally stepped on campus for an official visit, she was in love.
“The transition to college, though, is hard,” Swarthout said last year. “I really didn’t know what this year had to be.”
She was still a freshman when she stepped out of the shadows and onto the mat against Baylor in Matthew Knight Arena. She’s not afraid to admit that she’s nervous.
Susnara places an emphasis on connecting with these athletes — for that exact reason — and she has the tools to do it. The head coach is one of the sport’s best athletes. She’s hired assistant coaches Karly Nowak and Jacie Van de Zilver in back-to-back years whose expertise backs hers up. She preaches mental fortitude, especially after losses. It pays off.
“I’m just so grateful for Karly and Taylor (and) that they’re putting me in the spot that I’ve been in,” Swarthout said. “They trust me in certain skills, because it really is just accomplishing such a dream for me.”
She stops to think.
“I’m just so grateful. I’m so insanely thankful that I’m here in this position right now.”
One year later, she has paid them back. Swarthout was named NCATA Freshman of the Week after the Ducks’ win over Hawaii Pacific University, where she was part of a group that earned Oregon’s first perfect-10 in the open pyramid heat since 2021. Oregon made it to the NCATA Championship semifinal round. With her second season on the horizon, she’s ready for more.
“This year, I’m definitely putting a lot more pressure on myself,” she said before the 2025 season. “I know what’s expected of me, especially with my season last year. I know the expectations my teammates and my coaches have of me.”
She still has her strategy. She’ll step onto the mat on Saturday. For five seconds, she’ll let herself get nervous. Then she’ll remember something, she says.
“We’re not going to hold back.”
This is Part II of a three-part series telling the story of acrobatics and tumbling at the University of Oregon. Find Parts I and III online at dailyemerald.com.
