Before Yale Club Gymnastics was officially recognized as a Club Sport by the University in late 2013, recreational gymnastics at Yale was organized in a tumbling class at Payne Whitey Gymnasium taught by olympian Don Tonry and Kevin McLean (FES ’16). During the last semester before Don passed away in Spring 2013, Philipp Arndt ’16 and Daniel Aeschliman met in the tumbling class and started planning to start a men’s gymnastics team at Yale. Since the two realized there was also high demand for women’s recreational gymnastics on campus, they eventually decided to establish Yale Club Gymnastics as a coed sport.
The first official practice of Yale Club Gymnastics took place on Monday, December 2nd, 2013 at New Era Gymnastics in Hamden, CT with Daniel as coach. Since then, the club has been working out twice a week for two hours at the facility and since fall 2014 coaching is organized by New Era Gymnastics under Thomas Alberti. The Yale club team first competed in a competition on November 9, 2014 at Syracuse University and went to its first National Championships organized by the National Association of Collegiate Gymnastics Clubs (NAIGC) in early April 2015 in Philadelphia.
With costs for transportation, gym rental, competition entry and coaching being very high, the club is still struggling pay for ongoing costs and therefore has to take a membership fee that may be to high to truly make gymnastics at Yale accessible to all. We are incredibly happy about every sort of help we get from the University, parents, friends and alumni.