Fisk University did not just build the first HBCU women’s collegiate gymnastics team. It built a movement. Then it shut that movement down after three seasons, and the Black gymnastics community is still trying to process what that means.
The announcement came in June 2025. The program would end at the close of the 2026 season. Head coach Corrinne Tarver would eventually leave for Southern Connecticut State University. Star gymnast Morgan Price would transfer to Arkansas. The program that had packed arenas, appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and The Jennifer Hudson Show, and inspired a generation of Black girls to pick up the sport, was done.
Fisk said the decision came down to scheduling and recruiting challenges. That is the official language. The real answer is bigger than that.
The Scheduling Problem Nobody Talks About
Women’s collegiate gymnastics operates on a closed system. Most teams finalize their competition schedules months, sometimes years, in advance. For a brand new program with no conference affiliation, getting on those schedules is a fight every single season.
Fisk was never in a conference that sponsored gymnastics. The team competed as an independent, which meant every meet had to be individually negotiated. Every road trip had to be booked without the infrastructure that conference teams take for granted. Every home meet required a facility the school did not own.
That last part is the piece most people miss. Fisk gymnastics did not have a university gym. When you are a startup program trying to compete against SEC and Big 12 programs with multi million dollar training facilities, starting from a blank floor is not a disadvantage. It is a ceiling.
The Recruiting Gap
Recruiting was the other stated challenge. And it is a real one.
Elite Level 10 gymnasts get recruited early. By the time they are juniors in high school, the top ones have already committed to Alabama, LSU, Florida, Oklahoma, or UCLA. For Fisk to build a roster every year, it had to convince elite recruits to pass on those schools and come to Nashville instead.
Morgan Price did it. So did Ziya Coleman, Naimah Muhammad, Jordan Cromartie, and Kiara Richmond. But that is five athletes per incoming class, every year, who need to choose legacy over infrastructure. That math does not hold at scale. Not without the resources to compete for the next wave.
The HBCU Athletics Funding Gap Is The Real Story
Here is what Fisk is not going to say in a press release. HBCUs are chronically underfunded compared to predominantly white institutions, and that gap shows up in every corner of athletics.
A 2023 study found that HBCU athletic departments receive a fraction of the institutional support that similarly sized PWIs pull in. Gymnastics is one of the most expensive collegiate sports to operate. It requires specialized equipment, specialized coaching, specialized medical staff, specialized facilities, and travel budgets that balloon quickly when you are competing nationally without a conference to regionalize your meets.
Fisk tried to sustain a program that most D1 athletic departments would not even attempt without a dedicated endowment. The fact that the program lasted three years, broke multiple records, and produced the first HBCU gymnast to ever score a perfect 10 is not the failure. The failure is that a system built on a hundred years of resource disparity could not make space for it to continue.
Talladega College launched an HBCU gymnastics program and shut it down after one year. Wilberforce University is still operating a program. The pattern is clear. Starting an HBCU gymnastics program is possible. Sustaining one is a different conversation entirely.
What The Fisk Athletes Said
The athletes themselves have been open about the grief. Morgan Price transferred with her history intact. The other four, Naimah Muhammad, Ziya Coleman, Jordan Cromartie, and Kiara Richmond, had to decide what came next with less certainty.
What Happens Next For HBCU Gymnastics
The HBCU Gymnastics Alliance has been organizing around this moment. A petition with thousands of signatures is asking institutions, donors, and the NCAA to invest in sustaining and growing HBCU gymnastics programs. Brown Girls Do Gymnastics, the organization whose eight years of advocacy led to Fisk launching in the first place, is pushing for the next HBCU to pick up the torch.
Wilberforce is standing. Other HBCUs are watching. The question is not whether HBCU gymnastics will survive the Fisk shutdown. The question is whether the institutions that claim to care about Black women in sports will actually put money behind that claim the next time a program is ready to launch.
Fisk did the impossible for three years. The next HBCU program needs the infrastructure to do it for thirty.
Watch Flipped on BET.com and the BET YouTube channel to see the full story of how it happened and why it ended.
