Meet the La Salle coaches bringing a ‘sisterhood’ to three new sports programs

La Salle acrobatics and tumbling coach Brianna D’Angelo, triathlon coach Sage Maaranen, and rugby coach Kelsie McDowell are far from the likeliest of friends.

D’Angelo is from upstate New York and competed as an acrobatics and tumbling athlete at Glenville State in West Virginia before entering coaching.

McDowell played club rugby at Northern Iowa, served as head coach for Iowa State’s club team, and was an assistant coach for the varsity team at Army.

Maaranen, originally from New Mexico, spent time as a high school swimming coach, started a personal training business centered on triathlons, and most recently served as assistant triathlon coach at Queens University.

But the three share an unlikely bond. It comes from the common task of pioneering their respective sports at La Salle.

“It’s kind of a sisterhood,” Maaranen said. “Acrobatics and tumbling, rugby and triathlon, the stereotypical personalities that go along with that, it just doesn’t really mesh very well.”

The three have a group chat and text and call frequently to support one another in building their programs before competition starts in the 2025-26 academic year.

“We’re all in the same position where we’re starting from scratch,” D’Angelo said. “We always call each other up. … It’s definitely been nice having someone and not feeling like you’re alone.”

» READ MORE: Here's how La Salle's new men's basketball coach Darris Nichols' plans to make the Explorers 'Philly tough'

Acrobatics and tumbling, rugby, and triathlon are on the NCAA’s emerging sports for women list, a program that was created in 1994 after the Gender Equity Task Force issued a recommendation to create a “list of emerging sports for women to help close the participation gap between men’s and women’s sports.”

Equestrian and stunt, which incorporates skills from cheerleading, round out the five-sport list. Flag football was recommended to the program in February.

Emerging sports do not hold NCAA championships but may be recommended for elevation to championship status by meeting a minimum of 40 schools sponsoring a given sport at the varsity level.

There also are minimum contest and participation requirements. The most recent sport to elevate from the emerging list, women’s wrestling, became the NCAA’s 91st championship sport in January.

La Salle announced it was introducing acrobatics and tumbling, rugby, and triathlon, as well as reviving its baseball program, in April 2024. In November, an NCAA release characterized acrobatics and tumbling and triathlon as “trending toward NCAA championship consideration.”

While all of the emerging sports hold championships through their governing bodies, championship organization by the NCAA would make the sports and the athletes participating in them more visible.

“It will just create more opportunity to compete and get that exposure at a high level,” D’Angelo said. “It would be nice. It’s been a long time coming.”

The NCAA partners in the governance of an emerging sport with different organizations. These sports are required to follow NCAA competition regulations, such as weekly practice limits and compliance standards in recruiting. There are varsity programs in emerging sports that exist outside of the NCAA’s purview, but they do not count toward the 40-school threshold.

“I think of the NCAA as almost a union for the players, to make sure their safety and their integrity is being maintained,” McDowell said. “There are some rugby teams that are varsity but not a part of the NCAA, and they don’t have those [regulations]. It gets confusing for the girls. Like, ‘Well, that coach just gave me a T-shirt.’ That coach doesn’t have the rules, and he might be able to practice more than 20 hours a week, too.”

All three coaches agreed that building a strong team culture is the most important aspect of starting their programs. Rugby will be the first of the teams to compete, starting its 15s version of the sport on Hank DeVincent Field in August.

The triathlon team also will start its season in the fall, while acrobatics and tumbling will begin at John Glaser Arena in February. D’Angelo, Maaranen, and McDowell started in their respective posts in June 2024, giving them just over a year to build their rosters and prepare for their first competitive seasons.

The typical athletic profile each coach recruits varies. Since acrobatics and tumbling does not exist at the high school level, D’Angelo is pitching gymnasts, cheerleaders, and weight lifters on “a sport that they’ve never done.”

» READ MORE: Here’s why Jason Kelce attended the La Salle-Villanova women’s water polo match

As for McDowell, she has commitments from athletes with experience on USA Rugby’s U18 team but also looks for some “crossover” athletes who have skills in other sports like soccer or basketball but only some rugby experience. Maaranen primarily seeks athletes who have triathlon experience, but a few athletes committed to the sport specialize in one of its three disciplines more than the others.

However, all three coaches agree that good character is as important a trait in prospective athletes as any physical skill they may possess. Building a team culture is crucial to getting the new programs off the ground. Maaranen is grateful that she’s had a year to recruit “not just athletes, but the right athletes.”

“We don’t have a team to sell, which is really challenging,” Maaranen said. “You’re selling a vision. ‘This is what we want, this is what we’re building, this is where we want to go.’ You kind of have to find that pioneering spirit in athletes, who that resonates with.”

The “pioneering spirit” Maaranen describes is a common value for the athletes who are willing to embrace the task of establishing a program. McDowell admiringly calls her incoming group of recruits “a little crazy.”

“Almost all of them have had offers from other places, and they’re just crazy enough to believe in my vision and trust me,” McDowell said. “They’re not coming to La Salle because it has an amazing established rugby program. They’re coming because they’re going to establish an amazing rugby program.”

The initiative represents a significant turnaround from September 2020, when La Salle’s board of directors approved a recommendation to cut seven varsity sports. With the reintroduction of baseball and the addition of the three emerging programs under athletic director Ashwin Puri, who started at La Salle in 2023, the number of teams on campus at the start of the next academic year will rise to 21, four shy of where it stood before the 2020 cuts.

“When [Puri] and all the administrators brought on these programs, they were like, ‘No, we’re buying into this,’ ” Maaranen said. “‘We are supporting this program. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it right, and we want it to succeed and to grow.’ ”

D’Angelo knows what it feels like to be an athlete starting a program at a school. She was a member of Glenville State’s first acrobatics and tumbling roster in 2016, four years before it became an emerging sport.

D’Angelo has a gymnastics background, making her a good fit for acrobatics and tumbling, which is best described as a hybrid of gymnastics and competitive cheerleading.

“It’s hard to get a college scholarship in gymnastics, usually,” D’Angelo said. “In any sport, really. That’s what [acrobatics and tumbling] was created for, another opportunity for female athletes to compete at the collegiate level and get to have that experience, being a part of a college team.”

That’s the experience the emerging sports program sought when it was formed 31 years ago. According to the NCAA Sports Sponsorship and Participation Rates Database, 5,658 athletes competed in emerging sports in 2024.

In addition to bolstering the number of athletic programs on La Salle’s campus, the introduction of the three emerging programs gives roughly 86 women, based on NCAA roster size averages, an opportunity to compete as part of a team at the collegiate level. One of the goals is instilling young women with the life skills and values that come with playing a team sport.

“We’re not trying to just build rugby players, but strong, independent women that are going to go rule the world someday,” McDowell said.

The athletes on the inaugural rosters are getting a head start on their team experience and building an athletic community before they enroll. It’s not just the coaches who have formed unlikely cross-sport bonds.

“I was very surprised to find out that all of our athletes that are recruited are talking,” Maaranen said. “I met a girl who signed up for acrobatics and tumbling, and she’s like, ‘Oh, I know so-and-so.’ I was like, ‘How do you know her?’ She said, ‘Oh, we all talk.’ They’ve got this great sisterhood building already.”

» READ MORE: Follow the Inquirer's full coverage of La Salle athletics right here!