Fisk celebrates first HBCU national champion Morgan Price

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - Morgan Price has made history for Fisk University gymnastics.

In the young program’s second full season of competition, the Bulldogs have produced a national champion.

Price, a sophomore from Lebanon, Tennessee, won the 2024 USA Gymnastics Women’s Collegiate National Championship all-around title over the weekend.

At the national meet held in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Price scored 9.850 on the floor exercise, 9.850 on vault, 9.8 on bars and 9.750 on balance beam, resulting in a stellar 39.225 all-around score. With that, she won the all-around national title, becoming the first athlete from a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) to accomplish the feat.

“I’m a little bit of a perfectionist, so honestly, I knew that I was having a pretty good competition but I didn’t do the best beam routine that I had hoped, “ Price reflected.

“At the same time, I knew I still had a good competition,” Price said. “I had to wait until after the second session to finalize my win, and so I was just kind of anxiously waiting to see how the second session of girls did. After the second session, Coach Tarver went up to me and told me that I had won. It was kind of a relief because I knew that all my hard work during the offseason and during preseason had finally paid off.”

Price also earned USAG first-team all-American honors. Two of her teammates excelled in elite fashion as well. Liberty Mora and Aliyah Reed-Hammon were tabbed USAG second-team all-Americans.

Fisk gymnastics’ rapid and historic rise to excellence falls on-brand with the leader of the program.

In 1989, Fisk head coach Corrinne Tarver became the first African American woman to win the All-Around Gymnastics Championship while competing for the University of Georgia. She now becomes the first person to coach an all-around winner at an HBCU in Morgan Price.

In the 2022-2023 academic year, Fisk University became the first HBCU to have a women’s collegiate gymnastics team.

In the short tenure of the program, Tarver planned on this level of accomplishment and pitched it to her athletes in her recruiting conversations.

“The first question I ask them is, ‘Do you want to be a part of history?’” Tarver said. “And so now they will all be a part of the first team, but now when you see things like this, they’re making history again and they’re making history again. That’s our goal, to keep making history, to keep re-inventing HBCU gymnastics.”

The Bulldogs are already on their way to doing that, with Price leading the charge. She originally committed to the University of Arkansas, an SEC women’s gymnastics powerhouse, but changed course and committed to Fisk once hearing Coach Tarver’s vision.

“My decision was more than gymnastics,” Price said. “It was more to just inspire the younger generation so that they know that they can be an HBCU gymnast as well and they can compete with the best of the best.”

“Just because we’re at an HBCU and we might not have as much as other schools have, we can still compete with the best of the best and win.”

After leading the way as the first HBCU gymnastics program, Fisk is now one of three in the country. Talladega College and Wilberforce University have added women’s gymnastics programs as well.

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