Making history brought Regina Smith ’06 to tears as her fifth-grade neighbor, Cadence, belted out the Star-Spangled Banner before Morgan State University’s inaugural acrobatics and tumbling meet last February.

Once Cadence hit the song’s final note for a large crowd gathered inside Hill Field House, Smith wiped her eyes, clapped her hands, and led her team into the record books.

“It was an out-of-body experience,” Smith said. “We finally got to this day. This is history.”

Now in her second competitive season with the Bears, Smith is the first head coach of Morgan State’s first-ever acrobatics and tumbling team, which became the first Historically Black College or University (HBCU) Division I program to offer the sport.

After dropping their inaugural meet at home in Baltimore on February 10, 2024, to national powerhouse Quinnipiac University, the Bears bounced back to finish the season with a 2-4 record, including the program’s first win, against Stevenson University, on March 9, 2024.

“That was a really good experience for the girls, and they were really excited about it,” Smith said.

A Redbird cheerleading alum, Smith originally planned to become a teacher after graduating from Illinois State. But instead of landing in a classroom, she’s spent nearly two decades in gymnasiums and arenas across the country educating student-athletes as a cheerleading, dance, and acrobatics and tumbling coach.

“I realized that coaching was something I absolutely loved,” Smith said. “I interviewed for my first head coaching position in 2007, and I never looked back.”

As a coach, Smith has captured over 30 national championship titles and more than 50 top-three finishes for collegiate cheerleading, dance, gymnastics, and mascots.

Although she wasn’t planning to become a coach in college, Smith credits her time as a Redbird for laying the groundwork to build a successful coaching career.

“The experiences that Illinois State provided me were like none other, and I really wanted to embody those experiences and implement them into my coaching,” Smith said. “I didn’t realize at the time how much every experience, opportunity, and program that I was a part of, and being a collegiate cheerleader, really prepared me for this career.”

After taking a brief hiatus from coaching to raise her two children, Smith returned to college athletics in August 2022 when Morgan State asked her to lead their new acrobatics and tumbling team, an emerging NCAA sport that Smith describes as a form of gymnastics.

“What you see in artistic gymnastics is athletes on apparatuses—bars, beams, vault, floor,” Smith said. “In our sport, we’re on top of people, such as doing flips and pyramids. We have different events that mimic some of the same skillsets that you see in cheerleading, but it’s actually more gymnastics-based.”

Although the sport is new to Morgan State, this is Smith’s second time starting a program from scratch. In 2012, she launched Adrian College’s inaugural acrobatics and tumbling program in Adrian, Michigan.

“It’s like running a business,” Smith said. “You have to hire personnel first and then recruit your student-athletes. And once you have your team, you’re ordering equipment, making sure that we have everybody and everything that we need to be successful, and then educating our campus about what our sport is all about.”

At Morgan State, Smith manages three assistant coaches and a roster of 34 student-athletes who have specialty positions including base, top, tumbler, and utility. Smith said approximately half of her team is from a competitive cheer background and the other half is from an artistic gymnastics background. Divers and powerlifters often transition into the sport as well.

Highlights from Morgan State’s inaugural 2024 season included becoming the first HBCU Division I all-minority acrobatics and tumbling team and the first NCAA/National Collegiate Acrobatics and Tumbling Association (NCATA) program to tour the White House in Washington, D.C.

“They contacted us and said, ‘We want to honor your team for making history,’” Smith said. “So, we had a chance to walk through the White House and make some poses and stunt in front of the White House. It was an awesome experience for everyone.”

This year, Smith said her team is focused on improving their overall record and qualifying for the NCATA Championship in April by finishing the regular season among the top eight teams in the country.

“Our team knows that they’re capable of making it,” Smith said. “It’s just, can they be consistent in producing that winning outcome? For us, it’s about having a locked-in mindset.”

Smith’s high expectations for her student-athletes extend beyond acrobatics and tumbling.

“I believe in leading by example and really trying to build these students, both in the classroom and out of the classroom, on the mat and off the mat,” Smith said. “One of the things I pride our program on is that we did over 400 community service hours last year. Being able to serve the community and giving back means so much. And we had a cumulative GPA of over 3.2, so academics is important to me too.”

Smith said she also wants her student-athletes to know that they’re loved, valued, and that “they’re more than enough.”

“(Acrobatics and tumbling) lets them spread their wings and be who they truly are, authentically to themselves,” Smith said. “(I want them to) let the world know who they are, and go, be good at it.”

Morgan State’s 2025 acrobatics and tumbling season started February 2, and will continue through April.