It wasn’t the team title that No. 2 Oregon wanted, but the Ducks took home a trio of individual event titles and saw two senior athletes named All-Americans on April 27 as consolation from a strong trip to the 2025 NCATA National Championships.
The three winning heats — the Ducks qualified for 12 of the 15 possible finals — were some of Oregon’s strongest from the season. The All-Americans, both starting senior performers, emerged for two of the Ducks’ most reliable athletes.
Oregon’s seven-element acro champions, sophomore base Bella Swarthout and senior top Bethany Glick, only took over the heat midway through the season. The Ducks scored just 8.45 points in the heat against Gannon on March 7 — which prompted a change from Oregon head coach Taylor Susnara.
Swarthout and Glick — already familiar with each other from prior events — were inserted with a slide-to-split, press-handstand skill.
Glick described it after their first meet with it (against Mary-Hardin Baylor) as one she and Swarthout had been doing, “for a while now,” and that she felt that the press-handstand gave her the control that she sees as better in the acro event.
The two paid it off with an individual event title and a 9.875 score on Sunday. It’s Oregon’s first-ever seven-element acro win (the Ducks won a seven-element stunt title in 2011) and the first individual event championship for both athletes.
The Ducks also took a win in potentially their most dominant heat this season, the open pyramid. It’s the only one where Oregon scored a perfect-10 this season (it did it twice, home and away against Baylor), and it won the national title with another 9.875 to match seven-element.
Swarthout, who starts as the mid-base in the heat, doubled up on event titles with the win. The heat also included bases Blessyn McMorris (her first event title), Brylie Hoover (second), Ashlyn Parlett (first) and Emily Rezner (first) and top Selah Bell (first). It’s Oregon’s sixth-ever national title in the event after wins in 2019, 2014, 2012 and 2011.
Tumbler Riley Watson was the lone Duck to take home a tumbling national title. She won the six-element heat, where she turned in a 9.775 pass to take home the trophy. Watson, a senior, averaged a 9.81 score across Oregon’s three postseason meets, including a 9.850 against UMHB in the quarterfinal round.
It’s Oregon’s seventh six-element title — the Ducks most recently took home the 2023 edition — and Watson’s second (she won as part of the quad tumbling group in 2024).
Senior Alexis Giardina was named an All-American for the second-straight year following the championships. Giardina, who competes with Oregon as a base, top and tumbler, showed unprecedented versatility in 2025 as she became one of just 12 Oregon athletes to be named a multi-time All-American.
She said before the championships that she, “just really wanted to leave Oregon satisfied with my season, whatever that may be.”
“But, hopefully also as a leader that the upcoming classes will remember. Because I remember, the leaders are seniors here,” Giardina said. “I still reach out to them when it’s meet day, I still keep in contact, and we have a great relationship. That’s really just the senior I wanted to be.”
Senior base Blessyn McMorris was also named an All-American in a season where she returned from a yearlong Achilles injury to reinsert herself into Oregon’s starting lineup. She claimed the open pyramid national title as the bottom base after being named the 2022 Freshman of the Year, and competed in five of six events in each of the Ducks’ 10 meets.
With the 2025 season over, Oregon will now turn its attention to offseason training — much of which will involve the replacement of regular starters like Giardina and McMorris — and another run at the national title in 2026.
A previous version of this article listed a counter as a national champion. It has been updated to reflect that only physical participants were recognized as champions.
