Wawasee alumna Talia Kuhl advanced to regionals her senior year in 2022 and is currently the last Wawasee gymnast to make it out of sectionals. The Mail-Journal file photo.

By Nathan Pace
InkFreeNews

Wawasee sophomore Bailey Hursey is anxiously waiting to see what the Wawasee School Corporation will do with its gymnastics team. Hursey has been wanting to play her sport for the Warriors but says communication about the program has been frustrating. Last year, Hursey says she was training for the sport before ending up switching to swimming and diving.

“I had one of my friends keep asking me if we were going to have a season this year and I kept telling her ‘I have no idea,’ because I never got a straight answer. We had summer practices and right when school started we stopped those, we stopped everything,” Hursey said. “I had no communication about anything about gymnastics so I gave up trying because I had nothing to go off of.”

As a result, Hursey says she and a couple other gymnasts switched to swimming and diving last winter in the confusion. Hursey says she has multiple friends who are interested in joining the gymnastics team once the team has a commitment from the school.

Her father, Kurt Hursey, spoke at the Wawasee School Board meeting Monday, Aug. 12, where the board ultimately decided to table the decision on future on the gymnastics team to its next meeting, which will occur on Monday, Sept. 10.

“She’s been in this since the age of three to come into her high school career,” Kurt Hursey said. “They’re talking about a program in decline but they didn’t support the program much. So it’s a false narrative when they talk about it being in decline when they are not getting the opportunity to excel into it.”

The gymnastics program had just one gymnast last year, freshman Lainey Trowbridge, who trained with West Noble.

“She went to West Noble to go and practice but I had no idea that was even an option,” Bailey Hursey said. “Nobody had told me any of this stuff until the middle of December when I was already doing dive.”

Part of the confusion stems from when Molly Liston, the Wawasee gymnastics coach, resigned in August 2023. When the athletic department struggled to find a replacement coach in time for the season, Liston says she offered to come back when she learned the coaching search had stalled.

Trinity LaJoice graduated in 2023 as part of a strong senior class on the gymnastics team. The Mail-Journal file photo.

“Last year I technically resigned at the end of the 2022-23 season and I offered to coach again last year and they said not enough interest. I am planning to continue coaching if the team continues,” Liston said.

Liston says she has multiple girls interested in participating for the 2024-25 season including freshmen, sophomores and a senior in Morgan Reel. Reel had to sit out her junior season due to injury, which also led to just one gymnast a year ago.

While interest is there, Wawasee Athletic Director Brent Doty knows that might not always result in actual participation towards gymnastics.

“The transition from middle school to high school is a very difficult one. Some girls who are participating when they are really young or in the middle school, they don’t always translate to the high school because of that jump in difficulty. Some of those girls ended up falling off and not participating,” Doty said.

Doty spoke about the history for the program at the school board meeting acknowledging how the program has won 23 sectional titles. Alumna Tracy Rinker still holds the record for most state titles in the sport as she won 10 from 1977-80. In the 1977 season Rinker swept all events at the state meet.

However, the last sectional came in 2004. Wawasee’s gymnastics team is also in a similar situation as other programs in the state. Out of the the eight schools in the Northern Lakes Conference Wawasee, Warsaw and Plymouth are the only schools to offer the sport. Other programs have been cut in the last decade, leading to less than 80 schools that carry the sport statewide.

Another aspect which impacted the high school program is that the Wawasee Gymnastics Club is unaffiliated with the school itself. However, the club and its equipment is used in the annex gymnasium for the school’s program. Nika Prather, who coached at Wawasee for over 30 years, runs the club.

“If the equipment is not going to be set up at the high school, I won’t be able to do any classes,” Prather said. “The school is not going to store our equipment if there is no team. I could continue to go to the elementary schools and do tumbling but our club can’t maintain and sustain with just that.”

Wawasee gymnastics is in danger of being discontinued as a sport at the high school. Photo by Nathan Pace.

Emily Worrell serves as director of communications for Wawasee and clarified no decision has been made on the equipment.

“We knew that when they came this evening that there would be a lot of people taking about the club, but that’s not a school program. We have not had any discussion about the equipment or where it goes,” Worrell said.

Enrollment for the high school was brought up in the school board meeting as well. Wawasee sits with 860 students for the upcoming school year, is a decreased number that Worrell acknowledges will make it tough for all sports at the school to have full rosters.

“When you start splitting up a building of 800 plus kids in a season and you split your girls, there are not a lot of female athletes available for another sport. You are playing a numbers game,” Worrell said.

Gymnastics only needs three athletes to field a team, but depth is typically required for the top programs. Wawasee was sixth in sectionals in 2022 and 2023 as programs with more depth advanced to regionals.

Until the board makes their decision, members of the Wawasee gymnastics community will continue to fight for a season this upcoming winter.

“We’ve got the numbers, we’ve got the coach. We’ve got the backing of many of the other sports coaches so why isn’t this working?” Prather said. “It’s frustrating.”