Anon Does anyone have information on Inspire Gymnastics?

[Anonymous (2e5d)]

They opened a gym in South Carolina and have completely decimated other teams by poaching their athletes. Honestly, they were not open for two weeks and are showing 10 level 4's on their team! They are advertising as an Elite gym but I cannot find that they have ever competed an elite gymnast. The nearest I can see is that they had a gym in Washington but didn't have great upper levels. Lots of rumors are abound. I do not want this to be a "dump on the new gym". Just trying to figure out all the hype.

 

[Anonymous (cca4)]

Never heard of them, but it looks like they've been around since 2021. Did they just open a new facility?

 

[Anonymous (82e1)]

I lived in WA state until recently and initially my reaction was that surely this is another gym that just happens to have the same name, but you’re right- they do seem to have the same branding and there is some kind of relationship between the gyms.

One of my children does another sport and in that sport she was a teammate of an Inspire gymnast in WA. At some point they were a religious gym and that seemed to be a big part of the marketing and how individual families talked about the gym, which is very unusual in WA. I think they evolved from some of the post-pandemic gym closures and changes that were happening in the South Sound area but I don’t know the history of the coaches . There were coaching and possibly ownership turnover in August or September and the program was in disarray as of early fall. In the past, they really hyped that they were focused on getting girls to optionals/elite, but they never seemed to have girls on that track. To fill in the gaps this fall they moved a lot of girls up quickly from rec and pre-team to compulsory levels, but I don’t know if most of those girls ended up competing this season- we never saw them at the usual meets when we came back up that way.

We moved in the fall and I don’t see the mom from the other sport any more so I don’t have any more information.

 

[Anonymous (82e1)]

I just checked. The current SC coaches, Kim and Georgio, were the coaches that left the WA location last summer. The rest is a mystery.

 

[Anonymous (cca4)]

It could be a good program, I have no idea, but two things jump out at me from their website- the fact that the owners are only listed by their first names making it difficult to find out anything about them, and all of the emphasis on "fast tracking". Not a fan of fast tracking in the first place, and using it as a big selling point to parents seems disingenuous. Most kids won't benefit from fast tracking.

 

[Anonymous (2c61)]

There website is a little questionable. I also found there my meet page, not bad results but not brilliant either. https://www.mymeetscores.com/fullteam.pl?teamid=932047

 

[Anonymous (fc51)]

We were at Inspire in WA. They opened a small WA gym in 2020. Lots of successful gymnasts, over half competing in optionals levels. They abruptly announced move to SC last summer, and were gone less than a month later. They just opened new gym earlier this year in SC.

The WA gym sale/transition to new owners took longer than expected, which unfortunately prevented the gym from registering the team for meets and hiring new coaches. The WA gym is a small team around 40 kids, which is very different from the large gyms around the area. They’re working hard on improving the program.

As for the SC gym, Georgio & Kim emphasize shaping and details, with strengths in bars and tumbling. They focus on moving kids up to level where they can be successful and have fun. They won’t advance a gymnast unless they are safe with the skills needed for that level.

In our experience if someone moved to their gym, they were most likely looking at other gyms already.

 

[Anonymous (06a5)]

I live in western WA and would advise against sending any child to the aforementioned coaches. I shouldn't go into details in a public forum, but suffice it to say that there are big reasons they keep gym hopping, all the red flags that people sense just from researching them are merited, and you'll want to not touch any of it with a ten foot pole.

 

[Anonymous (6337)]

Upon initially researching this gym when it relocated to our area, my interest was piqued as I sought a suitable place for my 4-year-old child to explore gymnastics. Delving into the background of the owners, Kim and Georgio, I came across a website showcasing their photography business in addition to their claim of 25 years of full-time coaching experience. This dual focus raised some eyebrows, prompting me to investigate further.

While the gym appears to target elite and college track gymnasts, my attempts to validate these claims have yielded inconclusive results. Despite an assertion of having experience training numerous college gymnasts and having a “proven track record “ on the west coast, I have been unable to locate any verifiable instances of athletes who have been trained by them at the collegiate level.

My research has left me with a sense of unease, despite lacking firsthand experience with the gym. As a result, I decided against enrolling my daughter in their program. Furthermore, upon revisiting the photography business website, I discovered that it is now offline, adding another layer of uncertainty to the situation.

 

[Anonymous (9fd1)]

It's definitely not one of the gyms in Washington known for elites/level 10s/getting kids to NCAA.