The Airdrie Edge gymnastics club has been in its new facility since early this year, but took time this week to honour the process taken to get there.
The club held its donor appreciation night on Aug. 23 at Genesis Place, where it unveiled a new Ladder of Success monument wall in order to pay tribute to those who committed time, finances and resources to help build the state-of-the-art complex.
“For years, we were planning the facility and what we would do with it, so now to actually be doing it is very rewarding,” said coach Jaime Atkin. “The new facility has opened up tons of new things we can do now. It’s really exciting. It’s fantastic in every way.”
“We started the process in 2004, when the City agreed that we could become part of Phase 2 (of Genesis Place),” said Marthe Desmarais-Moen, president of Edge’s board of directors.
“It’s our way of thanking people for sticking with us through this long period of hard work that we did to finally get to this great building, It’s moved us to a completely new level for what we can offer in this city.”
The evening also featured a varied demonstration by the club’s athletes, where they performed maneuvers on all of the new equipment.
“We focused the demonstration on things we can do in the new facility that we could’ve never done in the old one,” Atkin said.
The new Edge facility has already hosted an Elite Canada event and the Western Canadian championships and has officially placed a bid to host the 2011 Canada Cup, with added support from City council last week.
“It’s a major national event and I’m fairly confident we’ll receive it,” Atkin said. “People from Gymnastics Canada were here for the Elite Canada event and they were very impressed and supportive. They’ve seen the facility and they’ve seen us run an event.”
“We still have a lot that we want to do, and there’s still fundraising ongoing, because we always need new equipment and there are areas we haven’t come close to what we want to do,” Desmarais-Moen said. “But the excitement is at a whole new level.”
The club’s fall registration opened last week, with record numbers already being reported.
“We have a whole bunch of new classes that we’re offering, including things we demonstrated today like the aerial circus arts,” Atkin said.
“It looks really good right now and there is a lot of interest.”
