Business: Blake’s Gymnastics II
Location: Village Shoppes of Rio Grande, Middle Township
Owner: Tracey Blake-Rossell, of Margate
Phone: 609-889-8880
Employees: Four
Blake’s Gymnastics II is an 1,800-square-foot facility with gymnastics equipment, uneven and parallel bars, balance beam, vaulting and tumbling strips.
We’re a 100 percent gymnastics facility. When the kids walk in, they know they’re just getting gymnastics ... not getting dance, not getting anything but gymnastics.
We offer gymnastics classes and we offer summer camp, birthday parties and private lessons.
We start classes at age 2 and go on up, for boys and girls. Our classes are relatively small, with one instructor and no more than five 2-year-olds.
We have classes for students up to 12 years old. Anyone older than 12, we recommend they go to our Northfield facility, which is 8,000 square feet.
We also are going to start a Level 3 gymnastics team in Rio Grande in September. We will be teaching them bar, balance beam and floor routines, and then they’ll do their vaults. That’s the extent of Level 3 for competitive gymnastics.
Our Level 3 team will compete at Flyers’ Academy and we host meets at our Northfield gym. The state championship is in Wildwood. A lot of local meets are at entry level of competition. The Level 3 team is for ages 4 up to 8 years old.
For new members, there is no registration fee, which is normally $25 a year. Classes range from $50 a month for a 2-year-old, but new members get six weeks for the same price.
We’re having a two-week summer camp in August, from 9 to 12 weekdays. If they sign up before July 15, the camp is $75 for the week and I’m only taking 15 kids per week.
Entry: We’re in our 25th year at Blake’s Gymnastics Training Academy in Northfield. We’ve had state, regional and national champions, and had numerous kids get partial and full gymnastics scholarships to universities. I myself was on a full ride when I attended Indiana University from 1980 to 1984.
I had some kids who commuted up to Northfield, and they’d long asked if we’d come down to Cape May County. There’s a lot of talent down there, so I made it my goal this year to open another facility there.
The future: Perhaps we’ll add some cheerleading classes. This summer we’ll have some boys’ tumbling classes in Rio Grande.
