Competitive gymnasts have awed crowds with their aerial grace for decades now, and in more recent years, the sport has gained popularity from young girls who hope to make the Olympics. We see the shimmering leotards and the performances executed with precision, but what goes on during practices? Patrick “Coach Pat” Hannan, owner of Phoenix G.E.M.S. Gymnastics, was tired of seeing the athletes treated poorly.

     “My own kids as well”, Hannan said, “ She would come home crying. And their coaches, I would watch screaming at the kids, and I just didn’t like that. And I said, ‘Well, there’s gotta be a place that kids can have fun and still do well.’ We looked around, and talked to people. We really didn’t find much, so that’s when I decided that we’re gonna open our own [gym] and be a little bit different than anybody else.”

     The gym has been open since 2007, and Hannan’s goal of being “a little bit different”, is shown very clearly during practices. “We wanted to put families first, not money first. We like to treat the kids like they’re part of our family. We like to know the families that are in the gym,” he explained when asked what the main difference was in comparison to other gyms in our area. 

     At Phoenix, teammates aren’t just teammates, they’re a second family. For at least ten years, on Thursday nights, the gymnasts would drag chairs around a folding table, and eat dinner together. “I put a lot of hours in the gym. And I don’t think anybody doesn’t know that I was here every day, working and getting everything ready. Where, I would bring in a crock pot so I could have dinner, because I didn’t go home ‘til ten or eleven o’clock at night a lot of times. So I’d bring a crock pot here in the morning, and I cooked dinner, and we had a gymnast at the time, “Can I have some of that? It looks good.” Absolutely. [And other girls would say] “Oh I want some too.” So we end up giving away a lot of food that I would bring. So that’s where the team dinners came in. We had decided to bring it for the whole team, and then when everybody gets to sit down and they have dinner and they eat together, it really starts creating that family bond”, Hannan said. 

     This gymnastics family isn’t exclusive to the Phoenix gymnasts though. Hannan will also schedule practices with the team at Bounce Gymnastics, with their coach, Shane. “We always went to [the] Grand Rapids meet. They had one of the best meets around, and I watch kids at meets. Not just our team. I watch other kids to see how they’re doing, and then I would go talk to those coaches and be, “Hey, what camps do you guys do?” and “What do you do for that [skill]?” I’d ask a bunch of questions, and Shane told me the one time, “Well, you know, we don’t go to a whole lot of camps, sometimes we go to Flip Fest or something”, and I said, “Well, you guys are a big gym, so do you hold a camp?” And he said, “No, why? You want to do one?” And I said, “Yeah, let’s do a camp”, and he said, “Alright, we’ll do a camp this summer together.” So we started the camp I think ten or eleven years ago”, Hannan explained. 

     Gymnastics is an individual sport, but it’s also a team sport at the same time. Hannan hopes that by doing camps and practices with other gyms, Phoenix won’t only cheer for their own teams, but they’ll cheer for the friends they’ve made from the other gyms as well. “You have a lot of other teams out there, and the coaches will [say], “You don’t cheer for them. They’re not us. Why would you do that?” If you can’t cheer for somebody to do their best, that’s not right. So [we] get with the other gyms in the area. I enjoy doing field trips to places, and the kids enjoy it [too].”