Bridgeport's Emilia Underwood Prepares for Senior Finale on National Stage
By Michael Minnich on April 18, 2026
Bridgeport native Emilia Underwood will finish her college acrobatics and tumbling career on the highest stage.
Underwood and her Glenville State teammates earned a spot in the 450 Salto event at the National Collegiate Acrobatics & Tumbling Association championships, which will be held on April 23-26 at Azusa Pacfiic University in Azusa, Calif.
GSU will also have a team in the Open Pass event.
“I’m very excited for that,” Underwood said. “We have five seniors on our team and three of us are getting to go and do this together…there are girls on this team that have never gotten to go. I’m really excited for them.”
There is only one division for acrobatics & tumbling, so schools like Baylor and Oregon mix in with GSU.
“You’re competing against the best of the best,” Underwood said. “It’s really exciting to see all that in person, too.”
She credits her time at Bridgeport for her success.
“Compared to people I knew from other places, when I came into college as a freshman, I felt so prepared,” Underwood said. “I know a lot of my classmates were stressed out, ‘This is so hard, I don’t know how to manage my time. I don’t know what to do.’
“At Bridgeport, you didn’t have the option to fail. Your academics are important, that’s what matters. You need to be the best you possibly can be because we want you to be the best and we want you to be successful,” Underwood said. “That has really translated to college and being able to do it on my own when I don’t have someone on my back saying, ‘Hey, this is due now’ or ‘You have to do this.’”
Glenville State nearly made nationals as a team after finishing second to Fairmont State in last week’s Mountain East Conference Tournament and ending with a No. 11 national ranking, just outside of the top 8 teams in the field.
“It was really exciting, especially with it being my senior year,” Underwood said. “We have really been through the wringer with injuries. It’s just been one thing after another. So for all 19 of us to compete together as a team for the last time, it was really special.”
The Pioneers’ success comes through quality shining over quantity.
“We only have 19 (athletes) and a lot of the other schools have rosters of 28 or more,” Underwood said. “It’s really special to be able to do it with half, and sometimes less than half, of the amount of athletes that other teams have.
“We’re really lucky that everyone is so versatile because when we’re having to make changes, the next person steps in. It doesn’t matter who you are,” Underwood said. “Half of our team is West Virginia residents, so that’s exciting.”
On the other side of that MEC final last weekend was another Bridgeport alum, Fairmont State’s Lexi Wilkinson.
“It’s always good to talk to her,” Underwood said. “She is a year younger than me and we cheered together when we were in high school. It’s full circle a little bit. We were teammates and now we’re competing on separate teams. It’s really exciting to see what she’s done at Fairmont because we started on similar paths, we went different ways, but we’re ending up in the same places.”
And that same place is the national championships.
“Everyone’s goal is to go and win and bring home a national title,” Underwood said. “As of right now, the only event title that Glenville State has is for open pyramid that our coach actually won when she was a student here. So we’ve been making jokes all year about how we need to get to nationals so we can get your trophy a friend.
“I just want to go and have fun and be able to say, I did the best I could with my teammates. I think that’s what’s most important…the rest is up to the judges.”
Coming up Sunday: A look at Fairmont State’s Lexi Wilkinson as she prepares for the Fighting Falcons’ own trip to nationals as a team.
