Nikita Bhat, Carolina Lopes and Sarah Norris are three of the students working to create a club gymnastics team at Tufts. They are currently in the process of gauging interest and writing a proposal to submit to the Club Sports program over the summer.
Lopes, a senior, has been trying to start a club gymnastics team since her sophomore year but has not made much progress until now. Lopes has now found more people to help her with this project thanks in part to Sidechat, an anonymous posting platform.
“When I posted on Sidechat it had like 30 upvotes. That’s how I met Taylor and then from her I met Carolina and Nikita,” Norris, a first-year, said. “I’m really excited to work with them.”
Although Lopes has tried to create a team in the past, this will be the first time the group submits a formal proposal to Club Sports. Although Lopes has not found Club Sports’ previous communications promising, she is not deterred.
Bailey Finocchio, assistant director of recreation and club sports, explained Club Sports’ decision-making process when it comes to approving proposals.
“There are many factors that go into reviewing new club sport applications including but not limited to risk, student interest, financial needs, facility availability, governing body affiliations, and personnel resources to name a few,” Finocchio wrote in an email to the Daily. “If we approve a club, they will first go through a probationary period known as ‘temporary approval’ in which we examine our ability to support the club and the club will show us that they can be a responsible and sustainable club.”
The founding members hope that the team will be open to students with a range of gymnastics experience.
“Even [for] people who have never even thought about doing gymnastics, the thought of learning how to do a cartwheel or a flip is just so cool,” Bhat, a first-year, said.
“Everyone wants gymnastics, everyone wants to try to flip,” Lopes added.
Lopes also explained that gymnastics is of similar risk to other Club Sports offerings.
“It is dangerous, but so is rugby and cheerleading, and all the other club sports are dangerous,” Lopes said. “I think that with gymnastics, it’s easy to mitigate [that]. You can teach people how to safely fall and how to safely spot each other.”
Finocchio wrote that the lack of a proper gymnastics facility on campus adds to the risk.
“Each sport has their own set of inherent risks,” Finocchio wrote. “Gymnastics as well as other sports have higher inherent risk due to the nature of the activities being performed. Gymnastics does not have a facility on campus where we can conduct this type of activity which adds another element of risk that needs to be evaluated. When reviewing new club requests, we work with other departments and risk experts to determine whether it is safe/appropriate for us to take on the sport or not.”
Bhat said that the organizers are working to implement safety measures.
“We’re trying to take their advice into consideration and have a safety coordinator,” Bhat said. “We know people who are interested and are EMT certified.”
According to Lopes, local gymnastics gym Boston Gymnastics Academy recently opened a new location in Medford, and the team is hoping to use that space.
“We could potentially train there depending on the budget,” Lopes said.
Finocchio shared that Club Sports works with the TCU Treasury in order to allocate funds to club sports teams. The amount of funding teams receive is dependent upon each club’s needs. Finocchio also noted that teams often have to fundraise as well to cover all of their costs.
The team members hope that funding for club sports will cover the cost of renting the gym as well as entrance fees for meets. Lopes explained that there are community levels in gymnastics where adult teams can participate in meets, which is what the club gymnastics team hopes to do. Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University and the University of Vermont have teams in this league, Lopes and Norris shared. The club gymnastics team will not have to worry about finding or paying a coach, though, as Lopes has offered to coach the team.
Ultimately, Lopes says that she can’t picture her life without gymnastics.
“[Gymnastics] has just been a safe space, a happy place, [it] has been everything for me,” Lopes said. “It has literally been where I learned the most about myself, where I was the most challenged, and the girls feel the same exact way, and I think more people would too.”
