As if the pandemic wasn’t a big enough blow to the small organization, the Woolwich Gymnastics Club has had not one but two floods at their Elmira facility in the past year. Now, the organization faces an uphill climb to resume normal operations as the province reopens.
The flooding destroyed more than $90,000 worth of equipment at a time when the not-for-profit organization had no operational revenue or ability to hold fundraising events, making for a very trying time, said Nancy Halstead, president of the Woolwich Gymnastics Club
“We received a call that the building we lease had flooded – we arrived and found our entire gym in about two inches of water. That was May 25. We lost about 75 per cent of our equipment, mats and things. We had a risk of mold,” she said of the first instance.
“On June 21, we got another call that the building had flooded for a second time – we had to put in a second claim and we’re waiting for that. We are looking at setting up a Gofundme page to help us out. The problem is with COVID we can’t do any fundraising.”
Halstead said she was shocked and overwhelmed upon entering the gym and seeing it was under two inches of water. Adding to the delayed reopening of the gymnastics club, COVID-19 continues to place pressures on the small organization.
Running in the community since 1987, the Woolwich Gymnastics Club has helped train many young athletes as well as providing recreation and a space for the likes of children’s parties.
“We haven’t been able to run any regular classes since fall 2019 – in the fall of 2020, we were able to open with some small capacity. We’re not sure what the restrictions will be, what our capacity will be able to run – we are hoping we will be able to offer something but probably not ’til the fall,” said Halstead.
The club saw little success from their virtual classes over the last year since few children have access to gymnastics equipment at home. Due to the pandemic and restrictions, they haven’t been able to bring in a steady cash flow that will help them recover from the flooding.
“Our lease is up in the building we’re in, in February 2022; we have been actively looking for a couple years with no luck. We have recently reached out to a local company, and we are in the works with them to see if we can come up with an agreement to share some space,” she said.
“We run programming for [kids] 18 months to adult classes. Primarily, our age group is 18 months to 16 years old. We are hoping if we can get a larger space to be able to increase our equipment in our gym to offer different programming, dependent on space and what we end up with. We’re looking forward to offering gymnastics again in the community.”
