Women’s History Month might be over, but Clemson gymnast Brie Clark is just getting started making history of her own.
After becoming the first college gymnast to pull off the Biles (a complex gymnastics move named after the one and only Simone Biles) to close out Black History Month, Clark is only looking up – both in her career and in the sport she excels in.
“I think people are starting to kind of figure out what it is,” Clark said of collegiate gymnastics.
“Once people are in it, they’re like in it. They’re like, ‘Oh, we got season tickets. We’ll be here next year too.’ So I think just the sport is growing in general. And once people watch it once, usually they’re fans for the rest of their lives.”
Thanks to skilled athletes like Brie Clark, gymnastics is experiencing a surge in popularity. However, there are still concerns over its marketing and reach, especially at the college level.
Case in point: We’re in the middle of the college gymnastics postseason, the sport’s version of March Madness–but unless you’re a diehard gymnastics junkie or a gymnast yourself, it’s easy to miss this momentous time of the year. According to Clark, one sizable hurdle for her sport is that there’s not a lot of easily accessible information about collegiate gymnastics out there.
As a result, concerns about the sport’s viewership have recently surfaced, especially amid the strong momentum in the growth of women’s sports as a whole.
In February, LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne expressed concern over “empty seats” at gymnastics meets after viewership of women’s gymnastics dipped in 2024, with the championship meet attracting 857,000 viewers after breaking the million mark just a year prior.
For Brie Clark, much of this can be attributed to the lack of advertising of the basics of the sport—the who, what, when, where, and why logistics of watching college gymnastics.
“After the Olympic cycle, people are like ‘Oh my gosh, gymnastics, it’s so cool, where can I watch it?’” Clark said. “And then a lot of times people don’t really know how to watch it or where to watch it or even really when the season is. It’s not that they don’t want to watch it. It’s more so like ‘I want to watch it, but I don’t know where to watch it. So I guess I’ll just watch it in the next Olympics.’”
The FULL routine of the historic moment that Brie Clark competed the Biles I on floor 💜🐅#TeamTwo pic.twitter.com/iRappnkhJA
— Clemson Gymnastics (@ClemsonGym) March 1, 2025
It’s not that the sport isn’t engaging, dynamic, or popular–after all, the Paris Olympics women’s gymnastics final garnered 34.7 million viewers. It was the most-watched weekday event of the Games. In 2023, women’s college gymnastics broke a viewership record that had stood for decades, clocking 1.02 million viewers for the women’s championship meet. In the United States, roughly 4.57 million gymnasts participated in the sport, with women and girls accounting for over 70% of participants. Increasing popularity and participation might account for the recent increase in collegiate gymnastics programs, including Clemson–or it might be the other way around.
As a member of the only D1 collegiate gymnastics program in the state of South Carolina, Brie Clark knows what it means to be a part of growing a brand, and also credits HBCUs like Fisk University that have recently added women’s gymnastics programs for contributing to the sport’s growth and appeal. To Clark, this investment is one of many indicators that gymnastics isn’t just a once-every-four-years kind of sport. She notes that a significant payoff happens with time and investment in the sport, including adding programs to existing athletic departments.
“Before Clemson, there weren’t any programs in South Carolina,” she said. “So adding more programs and growing the sport also… allows viewership and fans to get involved. And I know like at Littlejohn [Coliseum, Clemson’s gym that hosts men’s and women’s basketball and gymnastics and houses 9,000 fans], we’ve sold out a lot of our meets. And people drive from everywhere to come and watch and stuff because we’re the only team in the area.”
Nothing can replace the energy of live, in-person sports, which is one of the reasons access to gymnastics meets is so vital for the sport’s growth. It’s mind-boggling, for instance, that the University of Texas, Texas A&M, and the University of Houston, all located in one of the premier gymnastics states in the country, don’t have D1 gymnastics programs.
For fans who don’t have programs nearby, the other option is watching on television, which, according to Clark, poses other access issues for fans.
“Sometimes it’s hard to watch the meets,” she said. “There are ones on different websites and streamed online, and some of them, you have to pay for subscriptions and stuff like that. And it’s like $10. One of them I think was like $18 to watch the meet, and sometimes people are like, ‘yeah, no, like I’ll just watch the highlights.’”
To Clark’s point, outside of sometimes pricey streaming options, it can be difficult to find information about meet times or even meet logistics (like what a rotation is, for instance). The lack of education and awareness around the sport is a huge barrier to access. Luckily for gymnasts and their fans, it’s one that sports media can actively address in multiple ways.
One solution is education. For Brie Clark, a “lack of understanding” around the sport can make it “confusing” for viewers who are trying to get into it for the first time. But thanks to talent in the gymnastics booth from Trinity Thomas, Aly Raisman, and other elite gymnasts-turned commentators, fans are gaining a broader understanding of what the sport entails at the collegiate level.
Brie with a 9.9 on floor!!! 🔥🔥#TeamTwo | 📺ESPN+ pic.twitter.com/OJ57Fq6Kt2
— Clemson Gymnastics (@ClemsonGym) April 5, 2025
Campuses can also get involved in hyping up the sport. At Clemson, for instance, Clark notes that the team participates in preseason scrimmage-like meets called “Gymnastics 101” and “Gymnastics 102,” which are part season prep, and part fan engagement and education (and fans can also access a “Gymnastics 101” glossary year-round, courtesy of Clemson Gymnastics).
“Every year before meet season, we’ll have almost like an exhibition type deal,” she explained. “At our Gym 101 and Gym 102, we have on the screen explanations of scoring and the skills and how judging works, how each event works, how competitions work and stuff like that too. And I think that helped a lot of people like first starting out and now people have more of an understanding. So I think things like that are very, very helpful.”
Not only that, but such events are mutually beneficial. Brie Clark adds that the “us against ourselves” mentality of Gymnastics 101 and Gymnastics 102 helps the team with their season prep.
“It’s really fun and it’s a good way to get people excited for the season and stuff,” Clark added. “And it’s a good intro for us getting ready for the season and to get back into somewhat of a competition feel before the season.”
Of course, another way to increase the reach and access of college gymnastics is so simple, it shouldn’t need to be mentioned: put women’s sports on TV and people will watch. Olympic gymnastics proves time and time again that the sport has widespread global appeal. It’s time for sports media to pour the same time, attention, and energy into college gymnastics, where competitions occur every year, rather than every Olympic cycle.
