The birth of Gymnastics Plus began through the hundreds, if not thousands, of conversations I have had with gymnasts, parents and coaches. At the core of so many of those conversations were pain points that their daughter or athletes were going through. There was frustration, sadness, confusion about how to get out of this world of chaos and into the world of achievement!
Gymnastics Plus was created to solve those frustrations and at the core the three biggest hurdles were recruiting, mindset and performance.
Before now when it comes to recruiting there were two options. The first option was to try and figure it out on your own and that was costing so many people pain or a long period of time. The second option was to pay for a gymnastics recruiting consultant and that was costing many people thousands of dollars with nothing to show for it!
When it came to gymnasts trying to gain conference, overcome mental blocks and ultimately see themselves as valuable, the only option was hire someone on the outside.
Lastly, on the performance side within those hundreds of stories so many people mentioned the hurdle to correlate all these things together. It was hard for their gymnast to gain momentum in the gym and translate it into competition. Or the inability to build momentum in their recruiting journey. Struggle with emails, struggle with phone calls, don’t know who to reach out to or worst of all was showing up on those calls or visits as their true self.
A few thoughts started crossing my mind and the next thing I knew Gymnastics Plus started to become a real conversation.
Gymnastics Plus Foundation
I, Ryan Romano, and Johnthan Pope are the founders of Gymnastics Plus. We were high school wrestling teammates and have stayed in touch the past decade with Pope having a background in IT and software development. Ryan with a background in performance coaching have worked with nearly a dozen college sports programs over the years, in addition to owning multiple gyms in both Alabama and Texas.
I picked up the phone one day to call Pope with the only purpose of the call to have him help me build a landing page for this gymnastics recruiting and performance idea.
I began the conversation with a little bit of money to put towards building a landing page if he would be willing to help and he responded with yeah of course tell me more about what you’re trying to build.
As I began painting the picture of my vision of Gymnastics Plus he stopped me. He said Ryan listen if this is done right this will change the sport of gymnastics for decades! He said “how about this, don’t pay me anything right now and if it takes as we think then you can just give me a salary.”
I was like dope, sold!
We spent the next several months constantly building. Making decisions and then pivoting and quickly evolved into a custom built software and something far beyond our original conversation and he quickly became a co-founder on this journey with me!
At this point Gymnastics Plus started to come to life!
The Future of Gym Plus
We are nowhere where we want to be, but part of why I wanted to write this is to make sure we are documenting this incredible journey we are on together!
Pope, like myself, has kids involved in sports and has personally witnessed many of the same struggles inside her personal life.
I can say with absolute certainty that there is not another platform out there that puts everything in one place!
Every parent, athlete and coach I have given a demo to right now about the platform have all said this is incredible to have everything you need all in one place!
Not only that, we have made it valuable to college gymnastics coaches so that they are going to be actively on the site and only gives gymnasts an even better chance of standing out.
There is a profile builder unlike any social media platform.
A college tracker which is a digital board of every college team in the country and knowing where you are in your recruiting process with them.
You can read more about it in our blog: https://gymnasticsplus.org/gymnastics-plus-recruiting-meets-empowered/
I have spent the last 5 years working intensively with college gym programs on mental performance and put my entire mindset system on the platform!
With much more to come!
The mission and vision of Gymnastics Plus is living and breathing and we are excited to continue to share this journey with you!
Follow along the journey of Gymnastics Plus on Social Media:
https://www.youtube.com/@Gymnastics-Plus
