Aya Hallak is a smart, friendly 2nd grader at Brighter Horizon Academy, and she enjoys swimming, reading, and playing with her friends. Aya also loves gymnastics! She started taking classes at ASI Firewheel 6 months ago, and she has worked so hard and learned so much that she made it onto Coach Ann-Marie’s Level 1 Team! She has had so much fun competing this meet season, and she especially loves performing her floor routine.
Quote from Aya
“The Floor Routine is my strength. I feel like I’m dancing!”
If you ask Aya what she loves most about gymnastics, she’ll tell you “Everything!”
As much as she loves dancing on the floor, balancing on the beam, swinging on the bars, and running and jumping on the vault, Aya’s favorite thing about ASI is Coach Ann-Marie. At ASI, we put a lot of emphasis on the relationship between students and their coaches. Coaches like Ann-Marie are great role models for kids. They teach kids how to maintain a healthy lifestyle and a positive attitude. They help them take pride in their accomplishments and the hard work it took to get there. Aya feels lucky to have someone so positive to look up to.
Quote from Aya’s Mom
“Coach Ann-Marie has been an excellent coach. She is always teaching and challenging her students, and she builds their confidence!”
Aya has gained confidence and experience from competing for the first time this season.
On March 1, 2014, ASI is hosted a GRAND RE-OPENING at ASI FIREWHEEL to celebrate the awesome new staff we’ve built. There are a lot of friendly new faces who love kids, love gymnastics, and love to have fun! One of those new faces is Ann-Marie Delgadillo. Coach Ann-Marie moved to Dallas last summer and started coaching at ASI almost immediately after she walked into one of our gyms for the first time. She knew right away that she wanted to be a part of the fun!
Ann-Marie is one of many friendly new faces at ASI Firewheel.
Quote from Ann-Marie
“I heard about ASI by attending an ASI team meet for my boyfriend’s niece. I was still deciding when I was going to move to Dallas, but when I learned about how amazing this company was, my decision was easy. ASI offers so much to their employees. You can grow and grow as much as you want. There are so many types of classes to teach or fun products to work. The opportunities are amazing!”
Coach Ann-Marie loves to give encouragement to her team athletes during their meets, keeping them calm and positive. What a great role model!
Ann-Marie grew up doing gymnastics, and she feels so lucky to share the sport she loves with kids every day. The best part about her job is that she gets to share it with kids of all ages and abilities. At ASI, we believe that gymnastics is the best athletic development available to kids, and it’s our goal to offer the best gymnastics instruction possible to every child at their level. Whether a child has Olympic dreams or just needs to burn off some energy and have a blast in a safe, loving environment, there is a place for every child at ASI. Gymnastics can have an incredible impact on a child’s life, which is why Ann-Marie is so thrilled to be a part of that process!
Ann-Marie loves sharing gymnastics with kids of all ages.
Quote from Ann-Marie
“I love teaching kids how awesome this sport is. It is such a great physical activity for kids, but also helps them gain confidence, structure and discipline. It makes me so happy when a child accomplishes a skill and their face lights up. This is a very rewarding job.”
Last weekend, ASI Gymnastics hosted our “Weekend with the Girls” Meet at ASI The Woodlands, and the lovely ladies who competed put on quite a show! As you can probably tell from the pictures on our Facebook page, this wasn’t just a meet, it was a party!
ASI Gymnasts didn’t just look good in their boas and stunner shades, they looked good in their routines as well. ASI Gymnastics The Woodlands took 1st place in the large team competitions for Levels 1-3, 2nd place in the Level 4 small team competition, and 1st place in the Level 5 small team competition. Talk about stealing the show!
Silliness aside, teams from ASI Gymnastics The Woodlands made quite an impression this weekend with 4 first place finishes!
Despite the scores and the judges, meets are about so much more than competition. Gymnastics meets give kids the opportunity to showcase their talents and hard work throughout the season. They help kids develop confidence and learn about teamwork. A fun environment like the one ASI creates at all of our hosted meets promotes sportsmanship, and turns our meets into a celebration of our athletes’ accomplishments, instead of a stressful, intimidating sporting event. Dressing up, acting silly, and posing for pictures reminds our kids that while gymnastics is a serious sport that develops essential life skills like discipline and perseverance, there is always room for a little fun!
ASI Meets are the perfect balance of hard work and fun!
We love hosting meets so much, we’ve got even more stellar meets coming up! This weekend, March 1-2, we’re hosting the Survivor Challenge meet at ASI Keller. Girls Levels 1-6 will compete in 4 sessions on Saturday and 3 sessions on Saturday. Next Sunday, March 9, we’re hosting the Rockin’ in the USA meet at ASI Arlington, the second boys meet of the season. Stay tuned to our website, Facebook, and Twitter, where we’ll be posting photos, results, and more for the rest of the season!
ASI Gymnastics The Woodlands took 1st place in the large team competitions for Levels 1-3, 2nd place in the Level 4 small team competition, and 1st place in the Level 5 small team competition.
This past weekend, upper-level ASI Gymnasts competed at the 2014 Metroplex Challenge meet at the Fort Worth Convention Center. Coach Jordan’s Level 5 boys from ASI Keller and Coach Isis’s Level 6 and 7 girls from ASI Firewheel participated in the meet, along with hundreds of other gymnasts from 41 different states!
The Metroplex Challenge is a unique opportunity for our athletes to meet and compete with some of the best gymnasts in the country. One of the most fun features of this event is the College competitions that take place after all of the competitive sessions have finished for the day. Watching NCAA Gymnastics events shows our athletes that with some hard work and dedication, gymnastics can take you anywhere!
Friday night, athletes from the NCAA Men’s Gymnastics teams at the University of Oklahoma, Stanford University, and club teams from Texas A&M and the University of Texas competed in a team competition with a surprise upset. The men from Stanford shocked the #1-ranked Sooners with a massive team score of 445.15, winning by over 3 points, a huge margin of victory for NCAA Gymnastics!
On Saturday night, the Women’s Gymnastics teams from the University of Oklahoma, Louisiana State University, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Arizona battled it out until the very last routine. The Sooners posted a 198.175, the highest team score in the country so far this season, to claim the title.
The gymnasts from ASI put on quite a show as well. Every single one of Coach Isis’s girls from Firewheel improved upon their scores from their last meet, and one gymnast even scored above a 9 on every event! There is nothing more satisfying than seeing an athlete who has worked hard all season get the recognition they deserve!
Quote from Isis:
“I was so proud of my girls’ success this weekend. They all showed so much improvement from our last meet, and they just looked so poised and confident. I think the chance to see other amazing gymnasts from around the country compete, not to mention seeing just how far a career in gymnastics can take them, has really motivated them. So far this week in practice, they are working harder than I’ve ever seen them work. It’s a joy for me as a coach to see them pour so much heart into the sport they love, and it’s a bonus to see all that hard work recognized during meet season.”
Sam and James with their ASI Family out to make kids smile!
At ASI, we’re pretty proud of the family atmosphere we’ve created. Our coaches, sales reps, and management are constantly raving about how they feel so loved and supported by their coworkers. This feeling of closeness is even easier to achieve, however, when employees are actually related! For Sam and James Ragsdale, two of our most experienced coaches at ASI Keller and ASI Arlington, working at ASI is a family affair.
Coach Sam and Coach James back in the day” They haven’t changed a bit!
Sam joined the ASI family in July of 2006, after he walked into the Keller gym and applied before construction on the gym was even finished! After speaking with the ASI employees who were helping build the gym, he was impressed by the camaraderie and the coaching philosophy they all shared.
Quote from Sam
“The fact that the coaches and office staff from the other Dallas locations were the ones building the new gym blew my mind!! The amount of effort and teamwork there was amazing, and I could tell from talking to those employees that the love of kids was the most important thing to everyone in the company. I discovered that ASI offers much more than just gymnastics to kids, and I knew then and there that this is where I belong.”
Coach Sam loves working for a company that is so focused on loving kids unconditionally.
James started at ASI Arlington in February of 2007. He had worked as a manager in a different gymnastics and tumbling facility, but after seeing how much his brother was growing and enjoying himself at ASI, he decided to come on board and see what all the hype was about, and he hasn’t looked back since! James loves that because of our competitive pay and extensive benefits, he and his wife, Coach Laureen, can comfortably support themselves and start building their family.
Quote from James
“I love the opportunity to succeed and make this job a career. This particular industry is a tough one to make a career, but ASI makes this a reality, fulfilling a lifelong dream of working with children as a career. I currently have full medical and dental insurance, and my new years resolution is to keep in shape and to purchase a home with my beautiful wife.”
For Coach James, teaching gymnastics full-time is a dream job!
Between the two of them, Sam and James coach or have coached every class offered at ASI, from recreational gymnastics for kids of all ages to competitive team programs for boys and girls. They also supervise our “fun products” including Open Gym on Friday nights, or our monthly Parents’ Night Out events, and they are legendary for putting on quite a show at our famous Birthday Parties. Especially at this time of year, Sam and James are very popular power tumbling coaches. With cheerleading tryouts fast approaching, these gifted tumbling coaches are in high demand. Just ask them about their multiple success stories”
Quote from Sam
“I love helping kids achieve their greatest potential as tumblers, as well as teaching them to feel confident and comfortable performing fun and awesome skills. All of my students are great success stories!”
Quote from James
“It’s so satisfying when kids get the skills they work hard for, and as a coach, it’s the highlight of my day. I have had numerous success stories from students that start with absolutely no tumbling experience, not even a handstand or a cartwheel, that end up in our highest tumbling classes, working on flipping, twisting, and combination tumbling passes that would make your jaw drop!”
