Why Acrobatics & Tumbling Could Become a Go-To Replacement Sport For NCAA Schools

Last month, NCAA members voted to elevate acrobatics & tumbling to a championship sport, with the first championship competition projected for the fall of 2027.

Added to the NCAA Emerging Sports for Women program in August 2020, acrobatics & tumbling, which features different disciplines of gymnastics with certain aspects of competitive cheerleading mixed in, became eligible to reach championship status after eclipsing the 40-school sponsorship mark, doing so alongside STUNT, Division II women’s bowling and Division III women’s wrestling.

While schools navigate the new college sports landscape that includes the ability to pay student-athletes $20.5 million annually and the implementation of roster caps in place of scholarships, there is a clear incentive to cut costs while maintaining Title IX compliance.

We’ve seen a few swimming and diving programs axed over the last year as the NCAA’s new reality began to take shape. Cal Poly cut its swim teams last March, citing the “financial realities” of the House settlement, and then five months later, announced the addition of STUNT as a new varsity sport for the 2025-26 season.

We could be seeing a similar situation with acrobatics & tumbling.

Members of the Marshall University women’s swim & dive team were informed last week that the program would be cut at the end of the season, and acrobatics & tumbling has been rumored to be the sport taking its place (though nothing is official).

With the removal of the women’s swim & dive team, Marshall is losing 28 female roster spots, likely putting them in violation of Title IX. The numbers show they were in a tight spot prior to the cut.

According to Federal Data, about 57% of Marshall’s undergrads are women, and before this cut, about 60% of Marshall’s athletics participants are men.

The school might have some questions to answer in front of a courtroom in the future. https://t.co/Aqj9LNuHzv

— Braden Keith (@Braden_Keith) February 13, 2026

However, if it were to add acrobatics & tumbling, it would give them a cheaper avenue to add female roster spots and stay compliant.

Division I acrobatics & tumbling rosters tend to be larger than swim & dive teams–most have more than 30 athletes, which is the roster cap for swimming & diving.

There are currently 12 Division I schools that are National College Acrobatics & Tumbling Association (NCATA) members, and rosters from the 2025-26 season were available for 11 of them. (Manhattan University added the sport in 2024 and is expected to begin competition next season.)

Of those 11, eight have a roster of 30 or more this season, including four with 40-plus. Although that exceeds what a team can field in a given competition, Title IX counts total rostered athletes, not competition participants.

NCAA Division I Acrobatics & Tumblings Rosters, 2025-26

And looking at the new roster limits implemented as part of the House settlement, acrobatics & tumbling has a limit of 55 athletes, the fourth-highest among all sports behind men’s football, women’s rowing, and men’s and women’s STUNT, compared to women’s swimming & diving’s limit of 30.

When Marshall cut its swim & dive team, Athletic Director Gerald Harrison said: “Swimming requires significant ongoing facility, locker room, and infrastructure investment to support health, safety, training, and recruiting at the level our student-athletes deserve. At this time, we cannot commit to the level of facility and infrastructure investment necessary to support swimming and diving in the way our student-athletes deserve and expect from Marshall Athletics.”

Comparatively, acrobatics & tumbling would figure to be cheaper to maintain. Shorter seasons and less travel play a role, and of course, they train in a gym that doesn’t need much maintenance (compared to a pool).

Specific figures for how much acrobatics & tumbling costs a school in operating expenses year-over-year are hard to come by since, as an Emerging Sport (until last month), it is usually listed under “other sports” in schools’ Equity in Athletics Disclosure Acts (EADA).

However, as an example, Missouri State’s 2024 EADA shows its women’s swim & dive team had operating expenses of $124,289, while STUNT and acrobatics & tumbling combined (other sports) cost $536,000. If we’re cutting that in half, it’s still more than double what the swim team costs.

Looking at Baylor, which was one of the six schools that founded the NCATA in 2009-10, it had acrobatics & tumbling operating expenses of $507,007 in 2024-25, an increase from $423,747 in 2023-24.

That’s significantly more than Marshall spent on its women’s swim & dive team, which was $243,509 in its most recent EADA report (2024), but of course, Baylor is on the high end as the largest D1 roster in the country.

We also have to remember that swimming & diving’s operating expenses usually wouldn’t factor in the costs of running the facility.

So while the financial differences between the two aren’t cut and dry—maybe swimming & diving is cheaper in certain circumstances–it’s clear that participation opportunities (larger, more flexible rosters) in acrobatics & tumbling are more plentiful than swimming & diving, and may be the route athletic departments go as a cost-effective way to increase female roster spots.

From Marshall’s perspective, a large acrobatics & tumbling roster could be part of a strategy to show progress in Title IX compliance while simultaneously still budget-cutting.