USU Gymnastics Club prepares for first meet
Members of the USU men’s gymnastics club traveled to Boulder, Colorado on Friday and placed third for its first inter-squad meet of the year.
The event marked the first time the team has traveled for a meet since its inception in 2012.
There are no other men’s collegiate gymnastics clubs in Utah, and the Aggies have struggled to find teams to compete against.
“Nobody has really stepped up from Utah and said, ‘Hey, I’ll compete with you guys,’ so for us it’s been really hard. This year we’ve decided that we’re going to go to them,” said Jason O’Dell, the president of the club.
The club will also travel to Berkeley, California in March for a regional meet. In April, the team will travel to Philadelphia for the National Association of Intercollegiate Gymnastics Clubs national championships.
The Aggies sent three club members to the national championships last year, with all three finishing in the top 100 out of 400 participants.
O’Dell and Ahseante’ Hicks, the team captain and man who started the club, have big goals for the future.
“Our overall goal is to one day become a club sport,” Hicks said.
They’ve focused on finding people to join the team, Hicks said.
“What we’ve done to grow it, pretty much, a lot of advertising. We’ve done Day on the Quad, Student Involvement Fair. Any way we can get people to know that we exist, we did it,” he said. “It’s definitely grown a lot. We went from three people to, now we’re at seventeen in our club.”
The new members that have joined this year have been surprised at the atmosphere around the club.
“It’s turned out to be a lot more fun than I actually pictured,” said Ryley Jackson, a first-year member of the club.
Members of the club call themselves a family and try to do things together outside of practice, Jackson said.
“Our whole thing about the club is everyone being able to help everybody,” Hicks said. “There’s always some form of input that you can say that will help somebody else.”
The club will be hosting a home meet against Northern Arizona University on March 28 at 3:00 p.m. It will be held at Altius Gymnastics Academy in Logan. The team members are hoping for a big turn-out from Aggie fans, Hicks said.
More information on the USU Men’s Gymnastics Club can be found on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and on its YouTube page. They are also accepting sponsorship donations on giveforward.com, search “USU Gymnastics Club.”
— thomas.sorenson@aggiemail.usu.edu
Twitter: @tomcat340