For many people, it takes years, decades even, to figure out what they want to do with their life. Childhood is spent meandering through schoolyards and playing pretend, teenage years are a constant question mark, and college is just trying on one new identity after the other.
For most people.
Baylor acrobatics and tumbling legend Kiara Nowlin does not fit this mold.
Born in Oxnard, California, Nowlin started what would one day become a world-famous tumbling career when she was just 18 months old. This enthusiastic kid with a big personality and bigger smile could not be stopped.
“I was flipping off couches at about 18 months old,” she laughs. “My mom was like ‘Oh my gosh, she’s going to fall. She needs to learn to fall because I can’t really stop her from doing this.’” And so her mother enrolled her in a Mommy and Me gymnastics class and Kiara took to it like a joey to a springboard.
By the time Nowlin was just two, she was doing her first back handsprings. A couple of years later, she folded cheer into her practice as a sort of happy coincidence.
“At that time you couldn’t compete in gymnastics until you were six or seven,” Nowlin says. “So I joined the cheer team where I could get some practice until I could compete in gymnastics.”
She had originally planned to quit the cheer team once she could compete in gymnastics, but when the time came–at the ripe old age of six–this wise and determined child decided to keep doing both. She couldn’t know it at the time, but this combination of tumbling and cheer would one day make her one of Baylor’s greatest modern athletes.
Of course she wasn’t thinking about college then; she just wanted to tumble.
“I stopped doing ‘artistic gymnastics’ and started doing a sport called power tumbling around the age of eight,” she says.
“I so appreciated my parents–they put me in karate, ice skating, speech, spelling bees, art classes, music classes … But I was just not interested. I just didn’t love anything like I loved tumbling.”
When asked what exactly it is about tumbling that she loved so much, she pauses; stumped, as if she’s been asked, What is it you love about breathing?
“It was just so fun,” she finally says.
Nowlin spent her middle and high school years doing a combination of cheer and power tumbling. She also made time for friends–she went to school, went to parties, she dated, she really did the high school thing–but her laser focus was on tumbling.
“When I was younger, I knew two things: I wanted to go to the Olympics and I wanted to be a doctor.”
When Nowlin was starting out, it looked like power tumbling would become an Olympic sport around the time she’d be ready to compete. But when it didn’t make the cut, Nowlin had to switch up her Big Life Plans. “I want to go to the Olympics and become a doctor” became “I want to go to world championships and become a doctor.”
“Well, I didn’t become a doctor,” she laughs.
But Nowlin certainly did go to world championships for power tumbling–and she won. Every single one of them.
Her first world championship was in Canada for the 11 to 12 age group; her second championship was in Russia for the 13 to 14 age group; and her third and final was in France for the 15 to 16 age group.
After her first international win, Nowlin was invited to The Ellen Show. She remembers being interviewed by Ellen herself and then doing a short tumbling routine for the audience. “It was a wonderful experience,” she says; but still, at that time she didn’t quite grasp the magnitude.
After she won her second world championship, she was starting to get it. “I could feel from everyone else, like, oh this is a big deal,” she says.
And by the time her third world championship rolled around, Nowlin was old enough to get it–it was a big deal–and she was hungry. “I wanted that ‘threepeat,’” she says. And when she won this final world championship in France, she got it. She was a three-time international winner.
Welcome to Baylor
From a young age, Nowlin knew she wanted to go to college for tumbling– but wasn’t exactly sure what that would look like. The options were pretty limited at that time, so she thought she’d probably end up somewhere doing competitive cheer.
But some of her former teammates introduced her to a new sport called acrobatics and tumbling. This sport was essentially created in 2011, just two years before Nowlin would start college, and was only at six charter schools across the country at the time. Baylor happened to be one of those schools.
According to a Baylor press release, this new women’s sport was created with the intent of “combining the technique and power of tumbling with the grace and balance of acrobatics gymnastics.”
Immediately, Nowlin was intrigued.
“I’d never done the sport before,” she says, “but my first, immediate impression was that it was incredible.”
“And the meet format was different than anything I’d done before,” she adds.
Aside from being much longer than traditional tumbling or cheer meets, acro and tumbling meets follow a specific six-event formula. This is largely credited to a woman named Felecia Mulkey–or, as Baylor students might know her, Coach Fee.
Coach Fee started her career at Kennesaw State, turning its competitive cheer team into a national force before she moved over to the University of Oregon to build its acrobatics and tumbling program from the ground up. In fact, the six-event formula that Mulkey sketched out in her early days is, more or less, what the National Collegiate Acrobatics and Tumbling Association (NCATA) still endorses today.
It involves six events, each of which test the diverse skills of the athletes. The first event, Compulsory, includes acro, pyramid, toss, and tumbling. The second focuses on acro, the third on pyramid. Then there’s a brief halftime, followed by toss, tumbling, and then a team routine. All told, it’s nearly two hours of action.
“So, they’re really long,” Nowlin sums up.
The Golden Years
A lot happened during Nowlin’s time at Baylor between 2013 and 2017. For one thing, her sport completely turned around when Baylor welcomed a rather unexpected new addition to its staff.
“I remember when it was announced that Coach Fee was going to be the coach,” Nowlin says, thinking back to her sophomore year. “I was just so excited. From our very first team meeting, I knew she was going to build the program to be something that was really special.”
Nowlin turned out to be right: Coach Fee built an undefeated acro and tumbling team for Baylor, 10 years in a row.
Nowlin also fondly remembers her final national championship.
“I was doing one of my tumbling passes, and I knew this was it for me. I wasn’t going to compete after college. So I was doing the last pass of my career, and I landed it perfectly. It was the sort of pass to put an exclamation point on my athletic career,” she says, tearing up.
“I always landed with my arms out,” she gestures, arms at a T. “But this time, I landed hands clasped over my head.”
Nowlin remembers crying; the whole team was a mess of tears and emotion.
“And I was like, ‘you can’t cry!’” Nowlin laughs. “We still have to do our team routine. We’re not done!”
Assistant Coach Kelsey Rowell also remembers this moment well.
“I remember [Kiara’s] final solo pass, and I was like, I need to walk away right now because I’m going to start crying,” Rowell says. “I knew there was nothing that could stop them that year.”
Nowlin ended up graduating with a degree–not in a pre-med field as her younger self had envisioned, but in public relations with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. When she thinks back to her years at Baylor, it’s not without some longing.
“I miss it so much,” she says. “You don’t realize until it’s over how special that time really is.”
But Nowlin, ever the adventure-seeker, is onto her life’s next great escapade.
From Stuntwoman to New Mom
Just after graduating from Baylor, Nowlin briefly worked in L.A. as a stunt woman (which probably won’t surprise those who know her), before turning her attention back to what she’d studied in school. “I’d always focused on athletics,” she says, “so I really wanted to use my degree.”
She started working in public relations, while at the same time pursuing her master’s degree in business administration.
These days, Nowlin works as a public information officer for a county in California. She lives there with her new husband, and as of just a couple of months ago, her new baby girl.
In fact, in a very-small-world moment, her obstetrician in California ended up being a fellow Baylor Bear, class of 2017.
Nowlin still keeps up with her former teammates and coaches. And of course, she’s been keeping an eye on Baylor’s acro and tumbling team.
“The athletes that continue to evolve with the sport, their talent and their skill and dedication is just amazing,” Nowlin says.
If she could tell them one thing ahead of their upcoming championship, she’d say this:
“Really be present in each moment of the meet. It goes by so fast.”
From Six Schools to 56
Just as Nowlin’s life has evolved and progressed over these years, so too has her beloved college sport.
What started out as a very group-based sport in just six schools is now one more focused on the individual athlete’s strengths and has spread to 56 schools, with 47 competing this year alone.
“The sport itself has changed,” says Coach Rowell. “Earlier on it was more group-based, more like competitive cheer. A lot more athletes were involved in pyramid sessions, for example. Now one athlete holds up one athlete more regularly.”
“The things that these athletes are able to experience now is what we only dreamed of,” she adds.
One thing they certainly never dreamed of back when Nowlin was on the team was a meet with an attendance of over 2,300 and the school’s band playing for the crowd; and that is precisely what happened earlier this month when Baylor faced off against Oregon at the Ferrell Center.
“That has never happened in the history of the sport,” Rowell says. “The environment there was just really special.”
Baylor ended up defeating the Ducks in this match by 4.49 points, increasing the Bears’ winning streak to 47 meets, and sending them on their way to the NCATA National Championship, which will take place April 24 through 27 at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
“We feel pretty good,” says Rowell. “We’re just really excited to continue to improve and show up on meet day, and worry about us and what we can control.”
The future looks bright for both Kiara Nowlin, a new mom pursuing her dreams, and for Acro and Tumbling itself. For years the NCAA refused to acknowledge A&T as a sport, but these days it is now recognized as an “emerging sport,” and according to Rowell, it’s only a matter of time before they can compete in the NCAA Championship.
But first, the Bears have another National Championship to win.
