For a quarter century, the Woolwich Gymnastics Club has been training and developing future gymnasts throughout the township and surrounding area.
In conjunction with their 25th anniversary, the group has hired a new competitive coaching team for the 2011/2012 season: Carrie Doll, Maria Code and Jasmine Wilton.
Doll was born and raised in Elmira and made her way through the ranks of the Woolwich club, eventually becoming a Level-2 certified coach before leaving to study kinesiology at Brock University, where she graduated this year and has been working on physiotherapy programs in retirement homes throughout Kitchener and Guelph.
Code, who hails from Ohio originally, competed nationally for the United States Gymnastics Federation and worked her way to Level 9-10 before earning a full, four-year athletic scholarship to Western Michigan University, captaining the team in 1997 and earning the Mid-American Conference title of “Gymnast of the Year” in her final year of NCAA gymnastics.
Wilton grew up in Shelburne and has experience with both recreational and competitive levels of coaching with both the Shelburne Dynamics and Orangeville Twisters clubs. She has 20 years of experience as a coach and now lives in Kitchener with her husband and two children.
The Woolwich Gymnastics Club has come a long way from their first season which was spent in the gymnasium of Park Manor public school before moving to the small gym of Elmira District Secondary School. The club finally graduated to their own state-of-the-art facility on Earl Martin Drive in 2009.
From those humble roots, the club has grown to more than 500 students and 20 coaches. They were also named the top gymnastics club in the province in 2008 with fewer than 500 students, and in 2009 they captured the national prize as top club with fewer than 500 students, said president Nancy Halstead.
“We still remain as a family-oriented facility and our core values have always remained the same, ‘gymnastics for all,’” Halstead said. “We believe gymnastics are a foundation for almost anything.”
