When Baylor acrobatics and tumbling coach Felecia Mulkey searches for a student-athlete to join her dominant program, she looks for three things: talent, work ethic and character.
For a team that has won 10 straight National Collegiate Acrobatics and Tumbling Association championships, success for Mulkey starts with recruiting the right student-athletes.
As she sat down in the bleachers at Harrison High School in Kennesaw, Georgia, to observe a cheerleading practice in 2019, she found all those qualities in Mariah Polk.
"She's talented, that goes without saying," Mulkey said. "You can see that on videos, but more so it was how she was treating everyone around her, her interactions with her coach, the interactions with the different people on the team. We're very big on bringing the right humans into our space. Talent is awesome, and you got to have that. But if you don't have the work ethic, the integrity and the attitude that we want, then we'll pass on talent. And Mariah clearly had all of that."
Polk, then a junior in high school, had been a gymnast and cheerleader her entire life. As college neared, she started to feel burned out with gymnastics but found it hard to let go. Stumbling across an online questionnaire from Baylor acrobatics and tumbling, Polk found a new sport to love.
"Powerful" is the one word Polk uses to describe acrobatics and tumbling.
"Powerful from a physical standpoint, because the women that are participating in this sport are super strong, and we do things that people could never imagine," she said. "But I would even say powerful from the way that it unites a whole bunch of other sports."
Acrobatics and tumbling is a fast-paced, team-based discipline in which athletes perform a series of synchronized skills in events such as acrobatics, pyramid, toss, tumbling and team routines. Meets feature six events and typically span 90 to 120 minutes, with skills scored on difficulty and execution. The NCAA recently elevated the sport to championship status, with the first National Collegiate Acrobatics and Tumbling Championship to take place in the spring of 2027. The sport draws participants from various other sports.
Mariah Polk and her acrobatics and tumbling teammates listen to head coach Felecia Mulkey before a meet. (Photos courtesy of Mariah Polk)
"We have gymnasts and cheerleaders and power tumblers, and so it's powerful in uniting a group of women and allowing them to use the same skill set that they used throughout their youth years of sport to relearn a new sport, shaping us into amazing humans and athletes along the way," Polk said.
Before officially joining Baylor, Mulkey made sure Polk was aware of the challenge ahead: that she was going to have to earn everything going forward.
"(Mulkey) was like, 'When you come on my team, you're going to be surrounded by the best athletes in the world. And if that scares you, then you probably shouldn't come on my team. If competing scares you, you probably shouldn't sign here,'" Polk said. "I was like, 'That's what I need. Why not push myself each and every day that I'm in the gym?'"
Polk went on to finish high school a semester early in December 2020 and tackled the daunting task of beginning college as a midyear addition the following semester.
"While it was intimidating trying to figure out the ropes and how things worked, … I feel like I dealt with it pretty well," Polk said. "Everybody embraced me. The coaching staff checked in on me. The academic village that I had was amazing. And then, I think that Baylor does a really great job of ensuring that freshmen have the resources they need coming in."
Polk emerged as a team leader early on. As a sophomore, she won the team leadership award.
"She just has this God-given talent to lead, and people want to follow her," Mulkey said. "I think watching her figure out that she didn't have to be OK all the time, that was such a powerful thing to see."
Polk said she learned that lesson from Mulkey.
"Being charismatic is a gift and a curse because everybody knows when you're happy, and everybody knows when something's wrong," she said. "There were some days I was like, 'I need to just be quiet today, like I cannot lead the team,' and she fully allowed that."
A true test of her leadership and resilience came during her sophomore season, when an illness and lingering injury left her ability to compete in jeopardy one week before the national championship.
"I just remember sitting in the hospital bed feeling like I let everybody down," Polk said. "Walking to practice the next day, I was on the phone with my mom and I was like, 'Mom, I just want to come home. I worked so hard this entire season, I don't get it. … I just don't feel like that's fair.' That's probably the one time that I genuinely wanted to quit because I felt like I'd let everybody down and let myself down, in a way."
Polk (24) was a member of five acrobatics and tumbling championship teams at Baylor.
With the help of those around her, she remained positive. A few days later, Polk was cleared for competition.
"(2022) probably is the national championship that meant the most to me," Polk said. "Just because of having to come back and fight not only like emotionally but physically through that challenge. Winning that one holds a special place in my heart. … I just wanted to do it not only for the team, but for the village that supported us along the way that year."
Winning a national championship each year she was at Baylor, Polk grew accustomed to the hardships and pressure that were attached to the decorated program.
"Being a part of Baylor, it's, number one, just a great team culture," Polk said. "But number two, it truly forces you to compete. Some people on our team have gone all four years and have never touched the mat but have fought to do that every single year. Then there's some people who have been in and out of the starting lineup. I was fortunate enough to be able to be in the starting lineup every year, so that's something that I'm super grateful for, but that's not the story for everybody that competes at Baylor. So being a part of such a dominant culture, it's almost like there's this pressure on your shoulders, but it's super fun."
Outside of acrobatics and tumbling, Baylor also opened Polk up to what a career in sports could look like. When she joined the campus Student-Athlete Advisory Committee as a sophomore, she immediately fell in love with everything from performing community service and putting on student-athlete events to advocating for legislation to be passed on behalf of her peers.
This pushed Polk not only to pursue executive positions in SAAC within her school and conference during her junior year but also to switch from a premedical major to health, kinesiology and leisure studies.
Christal Peterson, a former staff member in Baylor's Student-Athlete Center for Excellence and a mentor to Polk, witnessed and aided her growth and passion for student-athlete advocacy.
"She wasn't vocal when she was a first-year, but you could feel this confidence that was coming into her," said Peterson, now an associate director of leadership development at the NCAA. "She just needed the platform to be able to step into it and then be encouraged that she belongs in that space and continue to do what she was doing."
After graduation, Polk earned an internship at the NCAA, where she is currently working with the Association-wide governance department. Being in attendance at the NCAA Convention when the sport that did so much for her as a student-athlete gained championship status was a true full-circle moment.
"I feel like sometimes people take our sport as a joke, until they see what we can do," Polk said. "It's kind of like, 'Oh, it's not really a collegiate sport yet. They don't have a national championship.' So I think that this will just make it real for people, that acrobatics and tumbling is a sport. It is actively changing lives."
