By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
A restructured Sitka gymnastics program is now on the move after months of planning and a pandemic-induced hiatus.
Scheduled to reopen in August, the reborn gymnastics program will focus on tumbling, gymnastics director Trisha Bessert told the Sentinel Thursday.
She hopes the new program will be more sustainable than the previous one.
“We’ve had a lot of time to think, just about sustainability and it was good to have that time to think how to bring this massive program back, because we’re a small business in a large space. So how to bring something like this back and make it sustainable and able to withstand something like a pandemic?” Bessert said in an interview at Totem Square. “Developing this new model where there is less overhead was a really important consideration.”
The old gymnastics program spent six years in a 10,000-square-foot facility on Smith Street. Bessert noted that the program is moving, but the location isn’t yet fixed.
The program will be based on tumbling.
“Quite different – so this new program is based around tumbling. It is a competitive sport as well, and the super trampoline is an Olympic event, but along with trampoline and tumbling – that’s what the new program is called – the other events are the double mini trampoline, and then there’s power tumbling, and that’s on a rod floor, which is bouncier than a spring floor,” Bessert said. “And it’s really great because all of these things have a very soft landing, soft takeoff zone, so what you’re looking at is easier on kids’ joints than traditional gymnastics.”
This new style will be co-ed as well.
“As long as they’re equal talents and are equal levels, you can put them in the same class. It will be co-ed. It’s about skill, not gender,” she said.
In her years of coaching in Sitka, Bessert believes that she has coached about 700 children in formal classes, with about 2,000 participating in a host of other activities. She has coached kids from barely walking to high school age.
For nonprofit vice president Candace Rutledge, gymnastics serves as a foundation for other athletic activities.
“Gymnastics is a building block for any other kind of sport a kid would want to do,” Rutledge said. She will also coach.
While competitive gymnastics is typically a solo sport, Bessert stressed the community-centered nature of her program.
“We had a thing at our old gym where you would ring the bell when you got a new skill. And everybody in the whole gym would stop and yell, ‘What did you do?’ And they got to show off what they learned and it was a big deal. We really taught celebration of advancements and it was all about being happy for one another,” she said.
The new program will reopen as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which opens the door to grant funding.
“Before, we were a for-profit but not making a profit. So it’s that accessibility to grants and fundraising,” Bessert said.
“We’re going to be opening in August if the equipment arrives and we get the new space lined up… and we will be catering to the same age range,” she said.
Much like Bessert, Rutledge stressed the importance of making the program sustainable.
“We’re really tailoring this program to be sustainable and for Sitkans, their interests that we’ve seen and their children and what they really enjoy doing. So that’s going to be the focus... With this equipment we can fold it up and store it. We won’t have that overhead of low enrollment in the summer and still be paying the same overhead of expensive utilities and rent,” Rutledge said.
After growing up on a farm in Wisconsin and paying her way through gymnastics lessons by simultaneously coaching, Bessert wants to keep costs for Sitkan gymnasts low.
“That was a huge thing for me, they paid way less tuition than anywhere definitely in the state, probably in the country. I wanted to make it as affordable as possible. And it’s hard to do,” she said.
While she initially came to Sitka to work as a SEARHC lab technician, Bessert soon learned that there was pent-up demand for a gymnastics program in town. It all began with a Facebook post gone wild.
“Brandon (Howard, now vice president of the nonprofit) made a comment and tagged me on a (Sitka Chatters) post that said, ‘Hey, my kid wants to learn how to tumble, can anyone in town teach her?’ And that’s where it started. I was going to coach two classes, right? I was working in a lab fulltime and when we hit the signups there were kids lined up like Black Friday,” Bessert recalled.
While she anticipated 15 kids would sign up, 105 registered on the first day. Gymnastics coaching quickly became her fulltime job.
One of those initial students was Zoe Tydingco, now 11
“My mom kept finding me trying to do upside down things that I didn’t know how to do,” Zoe said.
She has trained in gymnastics for six years and offered a brief show of her athletic prowess on a mat in Totem Square.
She particularly enjoys working on a trampoline.
“I like to bounce and do flips on it,” she said.
Next, she hopes to learn how to twist.
