Thirty-five thousand feet in the air above California, on her way to a recruiting visit for a sport that barely existed, Felecia Mulkey took a napkin from the flight attendant. 

She had two problems: The sport which the University of Oregon had hired her to coach didn’t have rules, and she had forgotten her notebook in her checked bag. Carefully, on the wrinkled United Airlines napkin, she sketched out the six-event formula that the collegiate association whose last 12 championships she owns now uses. She relaxed. She could figure out what came next.

The Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls won three straight titles. John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins won seven straight NCAA men’s basketball titles. A dominant women’s soccer program at the University of North Carolina secured nine championships in a row between 1986 and 1994. What Mulkey has done is unprecedented: 12 straight titles, split between two schools. Those two universities are the foundation of a sport that gives women a chance to compete. The sport itself has grown from infancy to nationwide existence in under two decades. For the coaches, athletes and families, it created an environment for personal development that they never would’ve had.

It’s the opportunity sport.

———————–

Twelve years after Mulkey took that flight from Eugene to California, on April 28, 2024, the 13th annual National Acrobatics and Tumbling Association Championship began. Mulkey’s Baylor Bears are seeking their ninth-straight title in a sport that has grown into one of the nation’s newest emerging competitions. The program she coached to the first four titles in the sport’s history, Oregon, will arrive helmed by one of her former recruits. It’s a full-circle moment. 

A few of the students at Fairmont State University (student population: 2,711) knew about it. A few more discovered it on the back pages of ESPN’s streaming website. A couple of student journalists made up the attending media. There may have been more total athletes than attendees in an echoing hardwood facility that was closer to a high school court than it was to any of the Division I gyms nationwide.

Their sport, barely a decade old, is scrambling for any shred of attention it can get. It’s not much. That dearth of exposure means that every time a coach at one of 55 universities nationwide recruits an athlete, they have to teach a new game. It’s an exclusively collegiate sport, but there’s still a few hundred athletes here.

Mulkey is perhaps the most important person in Fairmont today. The matriarch of the sport, as it were, is the head coach of the No. 1 seeded Baylor Bears, and also the NCATA’s (volunteer) Director of Expansion.

She’s talking for the first time after her Baylor Bears comprehensively dismantled the Oregon Ducks — coached by her former athlete, Taylor Susnara — for the third time this year. This time, it was in a national semifinal where they won 19 of 20 heats. It’s the second of three meets in as many days. She’s probably exhausted.

In spite of everything else — the need to prepare for tomorrow’s championship meet — she takes time to chat. The world of acrobatics and tumbling is smaller than the back room in Joe Retton Arena, and she remembers that she follows one of the reporters asking her a question on Twitter.

She laughs, then listens. The question comes: “Have you had any conversations with [Oregon head coach] Taylor Susnara?”

No, she hasn’t yet. She’s only seen her protegé in passing, across the mat. The two are connected by years of history: Susnara was an All-American athlete, recruited by Mulkey at Oregon before she flew east to Waco, TX. The two never shared a mat as part of the same team, though. They’ve never worked together, only watched and learned from afar.

“I love Taylor. I think that she’s doing a fantastic job at Oregon,” Mulkey said.

Not quite as fantastic as herself, of course. Pretty solid, though.

Susnara was in the room before the sport’s greatest sat down. Her answers reflected the strain of a season that slipped away from her team, bit by bit. She’s the product of a sport built to provide opportunity. The coach and her team seized it, handful by handful, until the rope drew taut. The shock is still reverberating.

Both leaders ache for success. Their pursuit of it is a lesson in management, mentality and excellence in a field where the stakes aren’t crystal clear. Their success means more than winning.

—————————————————————————————

Mulkey’s journey began as most do, with an impromptu conversation, and as few have, with a napkin.

In February 2007, she was about as far from Eugene, Oregon as you can get: Kennesaw, Georgia, where she was a researcher on the edge of law school. She’d all-but-given up on sports. From across the hall, she heard the story of Dr. Deborah Yow, at the University of Maryland.

Yow, the longtime athletic director in College Park, Md., had split an all-female group from the sideline and handed them scholarships. Now, they counted towards Title IX. Mulkey was intrigued.

In what she called a “last-ditch effort,” she put together a proposal for Dave Waples, her athletic director, for a Kennesaw State program that would echo Yow’s. “This is what Maryland did,” it would say, according to Mulkey. “This is what Oregon is doing. This is what we could do.”

If Waples said no, she was going to law school.

She had two more phone calls to make. The first: to Renee Baumgartner, at the time the deputy athletic director at Oregon. Mulkey rang. Baumgartner picked it up — back in an era when athletic directors still answered their own phones, Mulkey joked. 

“I was so naive,” Mulkey said. “I had no idea who I was talking to, other than the fact she told me her name, but I didn’t get the weight of who she was and it didn’t resonate. I just went through my list of questions, doing my research for my athletic director.” 

At the end of the call, Mulkey had one more question for Baumgartner. She wanted the contact information for Oregon’s coach — so that she could find out what this mystery person had said to sway the staff in Eugene. Who on Earth, she wondered, had managed to get a sport that didn’t exist green-lit at a Division I school?

No one. Oregon hadn’t filled the position.

Baumgartner told Mulkey to at least consider Oregon as a destination, if it didn’t work out in Georgia. Mulkey thanked Baumgartner for the legitimacy that Oregon’s national search gave the sport — it was much more than naming a cheer coach its head, as Maryland had — and hung up. She called her brother.

“I don’t even know where Oregon is on the map,” she told him. “I don’t know if it’s, like, touching Canada or California.”

He laughed. “Yeah, you should do it,” he said. “The Grateful Dead played in their stadium.”

—————-

Two months later, Mulkey and her Kennesaw State cheer team arrived in Florida for the Universal Cheerleaders Association (UCA) National Championship. She left her phone in the hotel room — enough calls. They went through the preliminary rounds. When she got back to the room, she had a voicemail. It was Baumgartner. The message played.

“Felicia. This is Renee from Oregon. I’m here in Daytona Beach, I just watched your team compete, and I want to speak with you.”

One more meeting. The two went to a nearby Starbucks the next day. They sat down, across from each other for the first time. Mulkey knew everything she needed to once she walked out the door, she says. She knew that this was her sport, that she would work for Baumgartner, and that they would change the world.

She still wasn’t sure where Oregon was.

——

Now, the napkin.

Mulkey is a big journaler. She fills notebook after notebook on away trips, especially then, across the country in culture shock. On a flight to her first recruiting trip, to Southern California, she left her journal in her checked bag.

The higher-ups at Oregon were concerned. How, they asked, would she stretch what they saw as competitive cheerleading from two-and-a-half minute routines into an event that would be worth the money sunk into a new sport?

With her notebook rattling around the belly of the plane, she pondered: “How can we create an event that lasts about as long as a basketball game?”

The six-event formula she sketched out is, more or less, what the NCATA endorses today. Six events, each of which test skills spanning the diverse background of the athletes involved. Acro, pyramid, toss and tumbling span the first hour of the meet. Each event features somewhere between three and seven athletes. The final event is the most important: a two-minute team routine, including 20 to 30 athletes, worth nearly a third of the meet’s points. Combined, it’s an hour and a half of action. Mulkey and her critics were satisfied.

She landed with the pitch that would secure her first recruit:

“I have no idea what we’re going to do, you guys, but you’re going to be able to come be a Duck, and we’re going to change the world, and we’re going to change college athletics for female athletes. Come and do this with me. Let’s figure it out.”

—————————————————————————————

Taylor Susnara was going to be a cheerleader.

She retired early from gymnastics, in middle school, with a back injury. She flipped over to cheer (it was always in the back of her mind, she said), but at some point, word came to the gym: “Come and do this with me. Let’s figure it out.” 

Mulkey hit Susnara’s competitive bone, the now-Oregon coach said. She wanted the opportunity to exercise that feeling, even after gymnastics was out of the picture. 

Susnara was hooked. Mulkey was off to Waco by the time Susnara arrived in 2015, but it didn’t matter. She was a three-time All American and four-time event national champion. Her competitive drive pushed the Ducks to three national championship appearances. But all three times, it was Mulkey and Baylor in the final who ousted her.

But she made her name in Eugene. There’s a reason that the post-playing roles are dominated by former athletes: It’s a sport so nuanced and complex that those who understand it best are the ones who lived it. Susnara’s assistant coach Karly Nowak, who competed at Oregon from 2020-23, emphasized it during the 2024 season.

“I think that I have a good connection with a lot of them, and I know them really well,” Nowak said in February 2024, “and I think I know how to get to them and know how to talk to them and what they need at certain times.”

Susnara added Nowak to her staff in 2023, less than a month after she graduated from Oregon, before hiring former Hawaii Pacific University assistant Jacie Van de Zilver in July 2024. Both, like Susnara, have a long history in the sport — it’s no mistake. Susnara’s program is built just as much on mental experience as it is professional expertise.

Nearly a decade later, she still has her eyes on the queen. Susnara and her program stormed through their third National Signing Day. She inked ten incoming freshmen, pulled from corners of the nation: Katy, TX. Burlington, NJ. Corvallis, OR. It’s just one sign of her impact.

Their backgrounds vary just as much. Lyric Davis, from Vancouver, WA, is a Level 10 competitive gymnast. Maile Tower, from Geismar, LA, is a two-time cheerleading national champion. The quote at the top of Susnara’s press release cites her excitement with the diversity she’s recruited. 

“Not only are you coming here to be a collegiate athlete, but you’re receiving your degree,” Susnara said, laying out her pitch to athletes. “The opportunities here at Oregon are just top notch as far as developing you as a whole human, rather than just an athlete.” 

There’s substance to her approach. Twelve of her student-athletes made the spring 2024 honor roll at Oregon, the most of any non-track and field sport. 

“In recruiting, it’s the talent we’re looking for,” she said, “but one thing that I’ve found really important is just who they are as individuals, their backgrounds…what their character is like. Ultimately, are they going to add value to the culture we’re trying to build here?”

Oregon believes in her. Susnara signed her own contract extension in July, keeping her in Eugene through at least 2028. Her credentials aren’t in doubt: In three seasons at the helm, she’s already coached the Ducks to seven national event titles, five All-American honors and one national championship appearance, in 2023.

She hasn’t toppled the queen yet, though.

————

Mulkey left Eugene in 2015 to take the job at Baylor, just before Susnara arrived as an athlete. She’d built two programs from the ground up, one a competitive cheer program at Kennesaw State, the other the acrobatics and tumbling program at Oregon. Never before, though, had she attempted to turn a program around.

She didn’t bring anyone with her, it’s important to note — no coaches, no athletes. She left everything she built on the banks of the Willamette River and flew to Waco, TX. She’d found success. Replicating it was the challenge she welcomed.

“I learned every year,” she said, “but I’ve never learned more than I did that year.” Off the mat was her new classroom, she made sure to point out. It was more about team culture and expectation management than pushing difficulty levels.

The difference now is astounding. She has in her office a photo of what she left behind: A frame of the first “Team Stunts and Gymnastics” group, on tan mats at the old McArthur Court on campus in Eugene. The placard reads: “Duck Invitational Meet. MacArthur Court. February 21, 2010.

Baylor just moved into the Ferrell Center last year, its permanent, exclusive home after years spent sharing the on-campus gym with every event imaginable. Alumni are coming back to visit, Mulkey said, and athletes from her first team returned to see the gym that they never had. 

“We’re all laughing,” Mulkey said, “And they were talking to my current team, and so my current team said, ‘Coach Fee, tell us about them.’” 

Mulkey remembered how hard-headed her first team was. It took her three months to get through to them. After that? “All bets were off.” The Bears stormed to a first-ever national title, and their grip on the trophy hasn’t let up yet.

Even now, even nine seasons and nine national championships later, she’s kept up at night. She’s done the create-a-sport part and sure, that’s “so cool” to her. Now, it’s about culture and legacy. Between preseason and NCATA responsibilities, Mulkey is traveling cross-country, teaching coaches her recipe of sustained excellence.

“I love figuring it out,” she said. “…How can I make these 53 women come together as one? They’re from all different walks of life, all different sports — diverse in every aspect.”

It’s a new puzzle every year. She loses All-Americans every summer, because that’s what great programs do. That’s how someone who owns every title in the history of the sport gets up in the morning.

Her coffee tastes like titles. Susnara’s tastes like revenge.

————

The championship coach was exhausted the day after the title meet, she confirms. She talks about the emotional drain — ”It’s like you’re running on pure adrenaline until after the championship,” she said, “and I just crashed.” She read crime fiction by Karin Slaughter and sat alone. No work.

Susnara had different plans. Whilst the Ducks flew home from the emptying campus at Fairmont State, the soon-to-be-third-year head coach was hungry. 

She spoke during the season about whether she would be satisfied without a national championship. On February 27, 2024, she thought just of avoiding Baylor in the early rounds of the bracket, not of the end result. After losing to the Bears at home on April 5, she focused on the positives in a closely-contested eight-point defeat. Sitting at her folding table in a back room of a gymnasium in West Virginia, she didn’t mention it. She opened up, three weeks later, in Eugene.

“Honestly,” she said, “I think if you asked me before the championship, I was highly disappointed — having the three losses on our record and going forward to the championship after being ranked second last year.”

Two weeks after the national semifinal loss, the Ducks were back in the gym. She refocused. She’s talking about Fee again.

“For me as the head coach here at Oregon,” she said, “my goal is to knock her down here soon. You bring those championships back to Oregon, you know. I think she keeps me personally, on my toes and wanting to continue to challenge myself and my program.”

The season is four months away. The coaches already have each other circled on their calendars — February 22, when the two will meet in Eugene. Their story has barely even started.

This is Part I of a three-part series telling the story of acrobatics and tumbling at the University of Oregon. Find Parts II and III online at dailyemerald.com.