Oregon acrobatics and tumbling head coach Taylor Susnara knew that she wanted then-All-American athlete Karly Nowak as her assistant “pretty much when that position opened up,” she said. The two have spent nearly half a decade together in Eugene as athlete and coach, but 2024 is their first year together as coaches and No. 2 Oregon (1-1) has its eyes on its first national championship since 2014. To get there, it’ll take immense mental strength — something that Susnara and Nowak preach.
This year, Oregon is looking to knock eight-time defending champion Baylor University off its perch, but it’ll take more than 10.00s across the board to beat the Bears. The two former Duck student-athletes are bringing a revitalized culture of mental health to the program, and in the process pressing one of the nation’s best programs one spot further. With a rematch against Baylor looming, Susnara and Nowak are pushing their team to prepare better than ever before — both on and off the mat.
They’ve placed extra emphasis this year on mental preparation — Susnara mentioned after the Ducks’ first meet against Hawaii Pacific University that “I think that we’re going to do a lot of mental training over these next couple of weeks,” and at the half against Baylor on Feb. 25, she said, “We’ve had little things here and there, but overall we’ve been working on our mental strength and I think that showed up today.”
During meets, instead of hammering concepts into their athlete’s brains, they’re focused on keeping them relaxed and confident. Most of the time, less than 10 athletes compete at once (the team lists 40-plus on its roster), but those not on the mat are fully engaged and their teammates’ biggest cheerleaders. The atmosphere inside Matthew Knight Arena is light; the “YMCA” and the Worm are often brought out between events and laughter permeates a venue that might otherwise feel cavernous.
They watch their athletes closely, enveloping them afterward in a big hug and offering the occasional whisper in their ear. That’s because “the mental piece in acrobatics and tumbling is honestly more important than the physical,” Nowak said. “We know that they can do it. They were all the best and that’s why we recruited them. They have the talent, they have the skill set, they have the [physical] strength — I think that training that mental [strength] is just something that’s really important to us, and it’s gonna help us win in the long run.”
In her evaluation of the program, “Oregon has been a powerhouse in acrobatics and tumbling for years now but throughout my time as an athlete, I’ve seen the good, the bad, the highs and the lows with respect to talent and coaching styles,” Susnara said. “I think that coming in as the head coach [in 2021], I really felt like that was an area that we were weakened in and something that we needed to continue to hone in on.”
Nowak has been an integral part of that — as a recent student-athlete grad, she’s “able to give some insight on what the team atmosphere was, how it could change [and] what could be better,” Susnara said. The two are together nearly all the time during meets, on the sidelines and separated only when one crouches in front of the judges’ table to watch their team compete.
That mental strength comes into play for a team that’s trying to break No. 1 Baylor’s eight-year chokehold on the national title. Led by former Oregon head coach Felecia Mulkey, who won four titles with the Ducks between 2011 and 2014, the Bears are the Ducks’ biggest opponent in their quest for a first championship in a decade. Oregon traveled to Waco, Texas, on Feb. 25 and fell to their rivals, 278.935 to 271.835. Baylor hasn’t lost a meet since March 27, 2021 — a visit to Eugene.
“With Baylor being our second meet,” Susnara said, “We expected [the team] to perform well — which I think they did. I told the team post-meet, ‘Thankfully we have the opportunity to see them again: for a chance to beat them before the national championship.’”
The Bears make the return trip to Eugene on April 5, and in the interim, the Ducks will continue to improve — both physically and mentally.
“[We’ll] just keep grinding, keep implementing upgrades in our start values and executing them well,” Susnara said. “Hopefully, by April and then by the national championship, we’ve done what we needed to do to come out on top.”
