With the arrival of 11 rookies, the Stunt team is mixing fresh talent with veteran experience as it heads into its second season of competition.

“We have a lot of new talent this year,” said junior captain Addison Black, an Applied Math and Statistics major. ”They’ve just been really open to trying new skills, open to learning, and just getting a feel for the team.

“Our main goals are, overall for the season, to try and learn routines one through five and get those really solid,” she said. 

Last season, the Pride went 8-10 in their debut year, and now the team is building toward more consistency as it prepares for the February opener.

Most of the team – 57.7% of the athletes – are returning veterans. 

The team is focused on building chemistry between rookies and returners in practice.

“As soon as the clock starts, we get up on the mat, we start going through warm up,” said junior Olivia Garcia, a Behavioral Sciences major. “We’ll either tumble for a little bit, like an hour. Then sometimes we’ll go into stunting for the rest of the time.” 

Chemistry is important in a sport that compares the performances of multiple teams doing the same routines.

“We’re competing directly against each other on the same exact mat at the same exact time trying to do the same exact thing better than the other team,”  said Marshall Smith, head coach.

“Stunt is the hybrid between competitive cheer and gymnastics,” said head coach Marshall Smith. “We’re trying to get as close as possible to the video examples that are sent out at the beginning of the year.” 

A Stunt game lasts about an hour, divided into four quarters: partner stunts, pyramids and tosses, jumps and tumbling and then putting it all together in a routine.

Garcia said the challenge is memorizing the choreography from the videos and advancing through increasingly difficult routines.

“Routine one, a lot of the groups already got within the first week. And routine two, the skills progress and get harder and harder,” Garcia said.

That progression is exactly what team leaders hope will give PNW an edge in year two.

PNW will test itself soon, with a scrimmage on Nov. 22 at St. Mary’s College in South Bend, and hopes to face Purdue’s main campus in a round robin event.