The line between satisfaction and disappointment is thin.
It’s one that Oregon acrobatics and tumbling drew on the mat when it made a run to the 2025 NCATA National Championship … and lost. It’s now been 11 years since the Ducks have taken home the sport’s ultimate prize — and more than four since they’ve beaten rivals and 10-time reigning champions Baylor University, to whom they lost in the final.
Yes, the Ducks won seven meets, took home a trio of individual event titles and boosted two athletes to All-American nods. They hit their highest score in seven years in their final meet of the regular season.
But no, they didn’t get the team national title that they’ve now been chasing for more than a decade.
In that sense, then, this season may go with all the rest: an all-but-dominant campaign where Oregon was better most of the teams — as it’s usually been, better than all but one.
Of course there was satisfaction — “I’m really, really proud of how they competed this weekend,” Oregon head coach Taylor Susnara said after the Ducks’ loss to Baylor.
The line is thin, though, and there was disappointment, too.
Susnara said before the season that she wanted to, “knock (Baylor and head coach Felecia Mulkey) down here soon.” Oregon took three swings at the Bears — and landed wide left, right and left again. They got close, but never landed their knockout blow.
It was, though, a new level of success for Susnara, who completed her fourth season as the head coach in Eugene with six total ranked victories and a second career national championship meet appearance.
Both the senior class — the first to spend their entire career in Susnara’s program — and the freshmen, who earned multiple weekly awards throughout the season, anchored the program’s present and future. Two of the seniors, Alexis Giardina and Blessyn McMorris, were Oregon’s All-Americans; Giardina earned her second career honor, while McMorris returned from a junior season spent on the sidelines with an Achilles injury to receive her first.
Oregon’s standout performances, a best-since-2021 score (281.205 points) against Morgan State University in its first meet and then a best-since-2018 total (283.305) at Baylor on the final day of the regular season, showcased a ceiling that hadn’t yet been hit under Susnara, either.
Neither was the “meet of our lives” that she said before the postseason Oregon would need for a title, but it was more than the Ducks had ever achieved under her leadership.
Oregon’s 2025 season — one of unprecedented but not-yet-ultimate heights — is in the books.
In 2026, the chase is the same: constant pursuit of one of collegiate sports’ greatest dynasties.
The post Oregon acrobatics and tumbling finishes season with three event titles, national championship loss appeared first on Daily Emerald.