Meet the teen gymnast star who turned down an Olympic-champion coach to flip for Fisk

Her stomach kept flipping, but she was nowhere near the gymnastics floor.

Morgan Price, at 16, had to tell an Olympics gold-medal winning coach that she no longer would compete on her college team.

The coach: Jordyn Wieber, part of the 2012 Summer Olympics' "Fierce Five," the first Olympic champ to be hired to run an NCAA women's gymnastics program.

Price, a Texas state and regional U.S. gymnastics champ, had officially committed to Wieber's Arkansas Razorbacks. And now, the teen was de-committing.

It didn't go so well.

"Coach Jordyn, at first, she just sat there. She was shocked," Price said. "Too stunned to speak."

Price had always wanted to go to a historically Black college or university.

And the moment Price found out Fisk University was becoming the first HBCU to add gymnastics, she knew she was off to Nashville.

"A few days later, I sat down again with Coach Jordyn, and then she did understand," Price said.

A few weeks after that, though, Price won third place at a national gymnastics competition — and Wieber called to try to convince the blue-chip to change her mind again and re-commit to Arkansas.

No dice.

"I told her, I'm sorry, this is my decision," said Price, now 17. "These are the dreams I want to follow."

Those dreams are being shared by many in the Black sports community nationwide who are following online the joy of Fisk's first gymnastics' team practices, which started last month.

'Super sassy girl'

Price grew up in an athletic family from Lebanon, Tennessee. Her dad, Chris Price, was a standout baseball player at Lebanon High School and Middle Tennessee State University in the 1980s and '90s.

He became one of the first — if not the first — African American from Lebanon to be signed to a Major League Baseball contract, Price's relatives and a longtime Wilson County baseball coach said.

Chris Price played for the Single A squad for the Kansas City Royals for two seasons before getting a job in sales and construction and starting a family.

In 2009, he died in a motorcycle crash when he was 36.

Gymnastics: Fisk University becomes first HBCU with gymnastics program, will begin in fall of 2022

"What a tragedy," said Woody Hunt, former longtime baseball coach at Cumberland University in Lebanon. "Chris was a heck of an athlete, heckuva person, from a heckuva a family. Just a tremendous person."

Morgan Price, the third of Chris Price's four children, was only 4. But her father's legacy stuck with her as she started to excel in gymnastics.

"To follow in my dad's footsteps, to be the first in this, means a lot to me," she told The Tennessean.

Price's foray into gymnastics started when she was a little girl cheering on her older sister Frankie.

She joined a team herself, and, yeah, she liked doing round offs or back handsprings, but she mostly liked hanging out with her gymnastics friends and the sparkly leotards the girls got to wear at the gym.

And what she really, really liked was attention from performing.

"I was a super sassy girl," Price said, beaming.

"I had a Jackson Five routine to 'ABC.' I was an extra little diva, loved to show off."

The family moved to Texas a few years after the fatal motorcycle crash so the girls could get access to some of the best gymnastics coaches in the country, said their mom Marsha Price, a realtor.

"The girls were so talented," she said, "that I wanted them to go as far as they could possibly go."

Frankie Price eventually got a full scholarship to University of Arkansas as her little sister started racking up state and regional high school championships.

Morgan Price had her eye on HBCUs — her mom, her grandparents and some cousins all had gone to them, and she wanted to follow.

"The legacy part of it, I wanted to support that. Plus, a lot of my mom’s friends were doctors and dentists, and they went to HBCUs and were doing well," she said.

The teen, though, was crushed when she found out that none of the historically Black colleges had an NCAA gymnastics program.

So when her older sister's coach at Arkansas called — the one with an Olympic gold medal — Price listened and eventually committed to joining the Razorbacks.

'That was it!'

About six months later, while scrolling through Instagram gymnastics accounts, she saw something that made her heart jump:

"Fisk University to become the first HBCU to start a gymnastics team!"

"And when I saw Fisk was in Nashville, my old hometown, that was it!" Price said, smiling.

Since her uncomfortable conversations with Arkansas, Wieber has come around to fully supporting Price's decision.

“Fisk adding the first-ever HBCU gymnastics program is extremely important and exciting for our sport," Wieber said in a statement to The Tennessean.

"We wish Morgan the best, and hope that this is only the beginning as collegiate gymnastics continues to expand and provide more opportunities.”

Since committing to Fisk, Price never has looked back, giddily joining practices with her new teammates, rockin' Fisk T-shirts and having a great time making history.

Fisk gymnastics coach Corinne Tarver — who as a University of Georgia student became first Black gymnast to win an NCAA all-around title in 1989 — is thrilled to provide a space where Black athletes make up most of the team.

"Women of color, we are very strong and very influential in the sport, but if you look at individual teams, it’s a sprinkle of color, usually just one or two," said Tarver, who also has been named athletic director for Fisk University.

"It can be frustration or disheartening for women of color because they don’t see a lot of teammates who look like them," she said. "For gymnasts to see a team that’s all women of color is so powerful."

Morgan Price knows Fisk won't have the best facilities or toughest schedules at first, but that's a trade-off she's willing to live with.

"Yeah, it's intimidating because it’s not the best of the best, but you don’t have to have the biggest, best gym to be a good gymnast.," she said.

"My ancestors made these [historically Black] schools for me, and that's a really big deal. I want to honor that."

Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384 or on Twitter @bradschmitt.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Teen gymnast star turns down an Olympic champ coach to flip for Fisk