Press Release:
Marianny Bisono will sign to continue her athletic and academic career at Saint Leo University, where she will compete in Acrobatics & Tumbling for the Lions, on Wednesday, November 11, 2026 at noon. She is the first Willow Grove YMCA Twister ever to earn a college scholarship in the sport.
Bisono signed at the Willow Grove YMCA Gymnastics Center in front of her family, her teammates, and the coaches who have worked with her since she came up through the program’s levels. Saint Leo, located in Saint Leo, Florida, competes in NCAA Division II as a member of the Sunshine State Conference.
“Marianny has grown with this program, and she earned this,” said Mubarak “Coach Mo” Simmons, Senior Gymnastics Director at the Willow Grove YMCA. “She’s won three championships, at three levels in three years. And now, she’s the first Twister to earn a college Acrobatics & Tumbling scholarship, and I don’t think she’ll be the last.”
A NATIONAL TITLE AT EVERY LEVEL
Bisono’s signing caps a climb through the Twisters program that produced a YMCA national team championship in each of her last three seasons, at a different level each year.
As a Level 7 in 2024, she was part of the Twisters squad that won the national team title, and she took the national championship on Vault individually along with a second-place finish on Uneven Bars. In 2025 she moved up to Level 8 and competed on the team that captured the first Level 8 national title in program history in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Last summer in Greensboro, North Carolina, she competed in the Women’s Championship Division, the top tier of YMCA gymnastics, contested among the best Level 9 and Level 10 gymnasts in the country. Willow Grove won the national team title there for the first time in program history. Bisono qualified for all four Senior event finals and finished third on Vault.
Winning at Level 7, then Level 8, then in the Championship Division, in three consecutive years, is a rare achievement. It is also the sort of trajectory that college programs notice.
THE BIG PICTURE
- Acrobatics & Tumbling is now an NCAA championship sport. In January 2026, NCAA members across all three divisions voted at the NCAA Convention to add Acrobatics & Tumbling as the association’s 93rd championship sport, elevating it out of the Emerging Sports for Women program. NCAA
- The first NCAA title is on the calendar. The NCAA’s first Acrobatics & Tumbling championship is projected for spring 2027, and Bisono will arrive at Saint Leo just as the sport begins its NCAA championship era. NCAA
- A growing college pathway for gymnasts. Fifty-two NCAA institutions sponsor Acrobatics & Tumbling as a varsity sport, with more than 1,300 student-athletes competing in spring 2026. For gymnasts in programs like the Twisters, that growth has opened a college pathway that barely existed a few years ago. NCATA
WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE PROGRAM
For the Willow Grove YMCA, Bisono’s signing is a marker of something the program has been building toward. The Twisters have been serving the Greater Philadelphia area since the early 1970s and have won national team championships in each of the last three seasons. Bisono is the first of their gymnasts to turn that development into a college scholarship in Acrobatics & Tumbling.
She will not be the last. The program has additional athletes in the college recruiting pipeline, and the staff has been building relationships with Acrobatics & Tumbling programs as the sport expands.
The program’s rise has come in its own space. When the Willow Grove YMCA opened its new branch in Hatboro in December 2019, it included a dedicated gymnastics center, giving the Twisters a 13,000 sq. ft. training space of their own. All three of the program’s consecutive national team titles have been won since the move.
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Photos: Greater Philadelphia YMCA