Yukon sees first competitive boys gymnastics program in more than a decade

Gymnastics is taking off in the Yukon, thanks in part to a new state-of-the-art facility. About 1,700 young Yukoners are now involved in the sport. And for the first time in more than a decade, boys have a competitive gymnastics program of their own. Georgia Moradis reports on the sport's growing popularity. The moves aren't overly complex but these flips and flops and hops are reason for excitement. For the first time in 15 years the Yukon Gymnastics Centre is offering a program for boys. We're very excited this is a program that since I started as head coach here people have asked The challenge? Finding the right person to lead it. for and we've wanted to get going. Men's artistic gymnastics, it's a completely different sport. So it requires different courses for staff training and different apparatus for the athletes to go on. So it's not quite as easy as just saying, yeah, let's offer it tomorrow. We really needed the right coach. Now they have that, thanks in large part to this facility. There was Western Canadian Championships here recently and I actually had boys from Alberta coming up to compete at the championships right and Kim was here and you know they were thinking of starting a men's program I heard about it and I was like wow you know that sounds like a great opportunity and I think Calgary where I come from the markets pretty saturated for men's gymnastics and so the opportunity to sort of start my own program was really enticing at that time. Paul brings to the Yukon an impressive resume, including representing Canada on the international stage. Yeah, I started gymnastics when I was maybe five or six years old. And I went through the high performance stream of gymnastics. So I competed until I was about 20, 21 years old, something around there. And then I had a back injury that caused me to stop. Jones and Hall aren't the only ones excited at the return of the program. Hi, I'm Arthur Morrow. I'm a born and raised Yukonner. I did participate in competitive men's gymnastics from 95 to 2001-ish. He also coached the men's program. Morrow is still involved in the sport. He's also wearing another hat, father, and gymnastics dad. Could you introduce yourself, your first name and your last name, and tell me how old you are? I forgot my first name. What's your name, Eldrick? Eldrick. Tell me what you do here when you come to this centre. Like, what are you working on today? What's that? It's kind of like exercising. Is that hard? No. It's awesome. It's not like that gap had anything to do with a lack of interest from, you know, boys in town who wanted to do it. It was just coaching staff issues. And so having that be resolved, so to speak, now and having that opportunity exist for the next generation is a very big deal as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, what do you see as the benefits of having this as an option for young Yukon boys? I think gymnastics generally is just a solid base for any... Anybody growing up, it teaches body awareness, motor control. It's generally quite fun for children to throw themselves around on soft pieces of equipment. At the end of the day, if we do a very good job, we get golden pirate coins. With the program back, the goal now is to one day see some of these young athletes doing what their new coach once did, compete for Canada on the international stage. Georgia Moradis, CBC News, Whitehorse.