COLUMBIA, Mo. — Is there a sports term for a doubleheader that isn’t really a doubleheader because the two events are happening simultaneously?
That’s what will be taking place inside Mizzou Arena on Friday when Missouri gymnastics and wrestling programs will compete simultaneously in the return of the school’s “Beauty and the Beast” event. The showcase last happened in 2019.
“We’ve had it a bunch of times, and I get driven crazy by people in the neighborhood and the community: ‘When’re we doing it again? When are we doing it again?’ ” wrestling coach Brian Smith said. “Especially my wife.”
His team, ranked No. 19, will face No. 12 Cornell. The Tigers are battling injuries but will get to wrestle in Columbia for the first time this season.
MU gymnastics, meanwhile, will be opening its 2025 season against four teams: Southeast Missouri State, Illinois State and Ball State.
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For the gymnastics program, re-kindling the event is part of a trend to watch this season: scheduled competitions that can be marketed as novelty events.
Mizzou will also hold a meet in St. Charles for the second year in a row, bringing Alabama, Illinois and Iowa to Family Arena for the Zou in the Lou quad on Feb. 14. The Tigers first staged that event last year and were pleased with the results, even though a snowstorm on the day of the meet kept some fans from making the trek.
It’s a chance for Missouri to tap into the St. Louis market by holding another sporting event there — in 2023, the school played a women’s soccer and a football game there, and the men’s basketball Braggin’ Rights game is held annually in the Enterprise Center. There are perks to competing in a four-team neutral setting for gymnasts set on making a postseason run this year, too.
“Besides connecting with the fan base, it’s the ability to compete on that kind of podium setting,” gymnastics coach Shannon Welker said. “That’s a little bit of a different feel — not only physically, with the balance of it — but also visually and it preps us for SEC Championships and what we’re hoping to be at: NCAA Championships, too.”
College gymnastics rankings — which aren’t produced via a poll, like some other sports, and instead weigh teams’ best scores — consider home-floor and road scores differently, so competing in St. Charles could also help the Tigers there.
A look at Mizzou gymnastics’ 2025 schedule, though, shows something interesting: Missouri will compete in the state five times, but only three of those events will take place in the Hearnes Center — its usual setting. The other two will be the Beauty and the Beast event in the basketball arena and the St. Charles quad.
That’s why Welker, sitting with the Post-Dispatch in his office before the holidays, had file folders of event documents and information sitting on his desk. Scheduling and staging events like these is different from a usual home dual, and it takes some planning.
Heading into a time when the finances of college sports will change and the pressure to generate revenue will likely increase, it’s also by design.
“We’re trying to do some stuff that will engage our fans,” Welker said. “I feel like the administration and our staff and some of the people we’ve got working with our team, we feel like we have an opportunity to increase our fan base.”
And Welker will have the time to do that: He recently signed a contract extension running through 2029, the athletics department announced Thursday.
For example, he and the program were thrilled to draw more than 7,300 fans for a home dual against Louisiana State last year. But that kind of crowd is “the norm” in the Southeastern Conference, he said — a league that contains many of the nation’s best gymnastics programs.
“We thought this would be a great way for us to give people an opportunity to not only come out and see gymnastics, but couple it with something else that’s unique — so the wrestling and the Zou to the Lou,” Welker said. “Just some things to really spark some enthusiasm and some attendance, quite honestly.”
That shouldn’t come off as a coach who’s worried or critical of the fan base. Rather, Welker knows his sport’s best sales pitch is seeing it play out in person. Drawing fans in means, well, drawing fans.
“That’s the biggest thing,” he said, “is if we can get people there once.”
