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We are the University of York’s gymnastics club, and we are raising money to help keep our sport safe and accessible. With your help, we can raise funds to keep our weekly training sessions Leeds Gymnastics Club and York City Gymnastics Club, which allow us to perform and teach skills that are unsafe or impossible to do with the equipment we use on campus. We’d also be able to use the funds to continue competing, a great way for our members to increase their motivation and get more involved with the sport.
Our club has grown exponentially over the past two years, from just a handful of members in a sports hall to a fully fledged society with opportunities we never thought we would get. In the past year and a half, we have more than tripled the amount of involved members to the club, as well as doubling the number of committee members. We are proud of what we have been able to create, but without your help we cannot sustain it.
We run a range of sessions, including beginner sessions guided by committee members, competition specific sessions designed to help each individual achieve their best, and general sessions where everyone gets a chance to use the full range of equipment that a real gymnastics club can offer.
In the last 2 and a half years, we have started representing the university in national league competitions.
While these opportunities have revolutionised our club, they are all costly. Without your donations, we cannot hope to keep our sport accessible and safe for all. Any donations you make to support our club will be greatly appreciated by many, and will allow gymnastics to remain affordable, engaging and safe.
Throughout the week, we hope to raise at least £2000. Of the money we raise, 75% will go towards training in safe facilities off campus, benefiting all of our members. The other 25% will go towards our competition costs. While our main priority is creating safe and accessible training sessions for all, many of our members enjoy competing and we hope to remove as many of the financial barriers to this as we can.
Of the £2000 raised, £1500 will be put towards paying York City Gymnastics Club for the hire of their gym and subsidising the cost of training at Leeds Gymnastics Club. At £6 per head per training session, £1500 will allow us to keep training in a safe environment for an entire semester.
The other £500 will go toward competition entry costs so members do not have to pay their own. Currently, each competition entry costs £16 per person so your donations can help us afford over 30 competition entries!
Gymnastics is an expensive sport that requires high level equipment and it’s important we allow our members to train on all the apparatus if we wish to do well in competition and safely progress. As a club, we are very passionate about inclusion in sport and wish to dissolve as many monetary barriers as we can so that all students are able to get involved.
With more funding, we will be able to improve our performance at competitions, as more frequent off campus training would enable us to practice new skills and perfect them on the appropriate equipment. It will also increase participation for both training and competitions as it will allow us to cater more effectively to our members of all abilities and allow people to become confident in the sport.
Increasing engagement from beginners has been an important part of our goals for the club this year. While we have been successful with our dedicated beginners sessions on campus, there is still room for us to create more accessible and effective sessions which aim to build the confidence of those new to the sport. Longer term goals include having trained coaches, either from an external club or by putting our committee members through qualifications, to support our beginners. With our funding more secure, we would be able to focus on goals like this to make our sport as accessible and welcoming as we can.
Your donations will also help our more experienced members, many of whom quit the sport as children and have returned to the sport after starting university. Often they wish to gain back old skills and their confidence in gymnastics, something that access to a wider range of equipment and more training hours, can help them achieve.
Sport can have a massively positive impact on mental health, especially for students who are often unable to mentally step away from their studies. Sports societies also offer a great opportunity to make new friends and find a community. We want to allow as many people as possible to get involved in this, whether they are continuing in a sport they love or trying something new for the first time.
Here are the challenges we are planning to complete (and some that you can get involved in!) across the week:
Here is our social media where you can follow along and keep up to date with the challenges :)
Insta - uoygymnastics
Email - gymnastics@yorksu.org
Tiktok - uoygymnastics
Facebook - University of York Gymnastics Group
All donations will be greatly appreciated by all of our members, regardless of how much you are able to donate. Your donation will also help us to unlock fundraising challenges that will help us reach our goal even faster (you can see these on the challenges page).
If you are looking to support an individual athlete or challenge please put a message with your donation saying who!
Alternatively, if you are unable to donate then please do spread the word by signing up as a Challenge Week ambassador for our club, and sharing our social media posts to your own socials so as many people as possible can read about our efforts!