The Quesnel Gymnastics Club is ready for its season of sports after a major renovation gave them much more room to train their athletes at the gym of the old Baker Elementary School.
The renovation, which happened over July took out a stage in the gym. Erin Hipkiss and Taylor O'Flynn are coaches at the gym and they told The Observer that it has been a huge boon to the gym.
"It's definitely opened up our gym a lot more. We have a much safer area for the kids to train and for to coach on. We're super thankful," Hipkiss said. They opened up the doors to their recreational program Sept. 15, with their competitive program starting a week prior to that.
"Most of our classes are sold out," Hipkiss said. "It looks like we're sitting at roughly 215 recreational kids with our competitive program sitting at about 53."
In January some of those competitive athletes will be going to Las Vegas for the Lady Luck competition.
"We're going to be attending with our friends from Fort St. John who got to go last year. We're really excited to take the kids all the way to Las Vegas," Hipkiss said. "It's going to be quite the experience for the girls. I'm really excited for the girls to see higher level gymnastics going on down there."
The coaches said they want to have a strong focus on giving their athletes a positive experience at the competition outside of just competition, they want the whole trip to be a fun experience for the athletes.
"We're going to take them to hopefully some fun shows. Hopefully some Cirque Du Soleil shows will be on the menu, some fun stuff like that," Hipkiss said. "Seeing kids from other gyms and getting to meet people from other walks of life. I think that's the biggest piece of exposure that I'm excited for them to experience."
The coaches will also be taking a trip to Comox to get experience with higher level coaching. Hipkiss has already worked with Olympic level athletes and was invited to an internship at a major gymnastics gym in the United States earlier this year. The trip to Comox will be O'Flynn's first time working in that high level environment.
While Hipkiss said she was intimidated when she attended her first high-level training camp, O'Flynn isn't.
"I'm too worried about it. I think it'll be fun," she said. There will be coaches from past and current Olympic teams there to help show coaches how they work with high-level athletes.
To help fund the trip to Las Vegas for the gymnastics kids the club will be the fundraising recipients for some of the frisbee tosses at River Rush home games.
The Gymnastics Club runs programs seven days a week and is starting up running birthday parties this season.
