After closing its doors in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Gym Trix Alpine reopened in mid-June with the help of the County Board of Supervisors. Founded in 1996 by Karen Smith, Gym Trix is a gymnastic and cheerleading instructional facility serving children ages 1 to 18.
Gym Trix has competitive all-star Cheer Force Prep cheerleading teams and competitive power gymnastics teams. It also offers recreational gymnastic artistic classes, tumbling classes, private lessons, birthday parties, special events, fundraisers and field trips for schools, and its Flip Zone open gym where kids can work on all their skills.
It has a few adults who come in for open gym but does not offer adult instructional classes.
Smith said they do “a little bit of everything for everyone.”
After the mandated shut down, the facility closed completely for three months. Smith said that they made the best of the situation utilizing that time doing upgrades to the facility and planning for reopening.
“During that time, we kept engagement with our clients by offering online instructional classes, just to keep the kids moving for free, where we posted videos on all of our social media networks,” said Smith. “We offered free Zoom classes to our employees and our clients to attend. Most of those were geared toward physical activity, like physical education classes. It is exceedingly difficult to teach gymnastic classes because most parents do not have mats and apparatus at home. We were highly creative in doing that.”
Smith said the San Diego County Board of Supervisors worked with all the sporting activities in the area and reclassified Gym Trix activities as a day camp, so it was able to stay open as a day camp when the governor shut down gyms in response to the growing number of COVID-19 cases in the region.
“Our facility has four giant garage doors, so it feels like an outdoor facility,” said Smith. “We have those doors always open with giant fans blowing through the facility to keep it an outdoor like environment.”
Smith said she has a strong staff working hard to keep up with the new COVID regulations.
“We’ve been keeping the kids moved away from each other,” said Smith. “The cleaning that we have been doing is insane, but we are proactive and going very slowly making sure that when the athletes come in, they are having their temperatures’ checked. Parents aren’t allowed in the facility, but they can stay outside, keeping social distancing and watch the children through the big garage doors.”
Smith said children do their classes and staff members clean constantly during the day making sure that all the apparatuses are wiped down, everything is sanitized properly and that the kids are safe.
For more information visit www.gymtrixinc.com.
