Gymnastics club head over heels about Pride nomination (From This Is Wiltshire)

Gymnastics club head over heels about Pride nomination

5:40pm Wednesday 15th February 2012 in News By Katie Bond

A LOCAL gymnastics club has been nominated for a Pride of Swindon award.

Esprit Gymnastics, which was formed in January 2004 as a multi-disciplined gymnastics club aimed at encouraging children of all ages to become involved in sport and fitness, has been put forward for a team award.

The awards ceremony will take place next month and judges are currently making their way through a long list of nominations.

This year, the year of the Olympics, they said they hoped to see plenty of sports teams and individuals nominated for the awards.

Esprit Gymnastics grew to more than 300 members in recent years and it became apparent the club’s rented warehouse was not adequate for the many people wanting to join.

The club’s volunteer coaches, management committee and parents then set about finding a new, permanent home for the club and spent the next five years trying to secure a building and raise the funding required to make the dream a reality.

By January 2010 they had persuaded Swindon Council to give them a long lease on a disused sports centre on the site of the old Headlands School, that was about to be demolished.

By working closely with the Leisure Service Department, the club formed a strong partnership and between them created a Community Use agreement that would allow the development of a high quality gymnastics training facility with additional rooms available for community use.

As a result of this link the sports governing body, British Gymnastics, released £150,000 of funding to fully equip the club with Olympic standard equipment and at the beginning of last year the club was ready to start its expansion and began talking with schools, other clubs and individuals to let them know what was on offer at the club.

A spokesman for the club said: “Esprit has used its success to grow the club to in excess of 740 grass roots members, attract other sport and activity groups into the centre, increase disabled and special needs participation levels, retain more girls post 13 in sport, well past the national average, and develop 15 new qualified gymnastic coaches to work within the club with a few, proactive schools.

“None of the club’s achievements are down to any one individual. All of this has been achieved by a small team of dedicated volunteers who want to see Swindon become recognised as a fit, healthy, happy and successful sporting town.

“Esprit Gymnastics is a team working to develop great athletes, who in turn become great people.”