STUNT (Cheer)

[ST_Lawson]

This one is really new to college athletics, having just been approved as an NCAA sport this last year. STUNT was created by USA Cheer as an opportunity to meet Title IX requirements of a "sport".

Here's the college STUNT website which will tell you a lot more about who all participates: https://collegestunt.org/
In the OVC, UT Martin has it. Other nearby schools include: Concordia University and Dominican University (in the Chicago area); Maryville, Missouri Baptist, and Fontbonne (in the St. Louis area), as well as Buena Vista University in northwestern Iowa, Drury University in southwestern Missouri, and Central Methodist in central Missouri. It looks like it's really taken off in Michigan (8 schools), Ohio (7 schools), California (15 schools), and in the Oklahoma and eastern Texas region. Many of the schools only have it as a club sport though. The only DI schools that competed with it as a sponsored sport this last year was Cal Baptist, Kentucky, and UT-Martin.

It's essentially competitive head-to-head cheer/tumbling. This page has a series of videos that explains what it's all about: https://stuntthesport.org/about/
 

[ST_Lawson]

Found a bit more info about conferences: https://stuntthesport.org/wp-content/up ... 072500.png
Looks like they have separate conferences just for STUNT currently (probably until enough schools add it to have all-sports conferences start adding at a sponsored sport). Based on the conferences I'm seeing listed, and who's in them, we are probably looking at either the Mid America Central which includes the 3 schools in Missouri and 1 in Iowa (https://collegestunt.org/mid-america-conference/) or Mid America West which includes some of the schools in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, but also includes 2 of the DI schools...one of which is UT Martin in our upcoming conference (https://collegestunt.org/mid-america-west-conference/).

I also just noticed on one of the sites that Central Arkansas is also adding a varsity STUNT team for this coming school year, which means that DI schools with varsity teams will be: Kentucky, UT Martin, Central Arkansas, Cal Baptist, and ourselves. It's possible there will be a few more too (like, we're not added to the list yet, so other schools might sign up to add it this summer).