Nashville’s Fisk University is the only HBCU with a scholarship women’s gymnastics program, officially beginning competition in 2023. It’s an incredible moment for the school and for a sport that’s regarded as steeped in privilege and wealth and hasn’t always been welcoming to athletes of color. Breaking that symbolic ground is a big enough deal — but it gets better. Morgan Price, a five-star gymnastics recruit, announced in June she’d decommitted from Arkansas, an SEC program that’s won nine NCAA regional championships since 2006 and is coached by Olympic champion Jordyn Wieber, and would instead matriculate at Fisk. It’s basically the gymnastics equivalent of a top-ranked high school quarterback saying he no longer wanted to play for Nick Saban at Alabama, but instead would strap ’em on the other side of Tuscaloosa at Stillman. Obviously, bringing in Price was a major coup for Fisk coach Corrinne Tarver, but it was a bigger statement about HBCU athletics and opportunities at HBCUs in general. Plus it generated a significant amount of attention for the upstart program — the kind of attention that builds on itself and may get other top recruits to take a look at Nashville’s oldest university.
