Liberty University Club Sports Athletics
Liberty gymnasts improving by leaps and bounds in new gym
10/12/2020 12:00:00 AM | Gymnastics
Liberty University's women's gymnastics team is thriving out of its new facility in the Club Sports Training Complex, where the Lady Flames have been practicing for the past six weeks.
"Honestly, it's been great," Liberty sophomore Caitlin Greiner said. "It's really been a blessing and great to see God's favor on this team. I'm just glad to be back. It's been fun. Being with this team in this brand new facility, it's been really nice."
Head Coach Tim Kappel said the spacious 5,000-square foot gym, equipped with all of the apparatus needed to practice on and compete in the four events available to women in the sport, is much more convenient for the Lady Flames' student-athletes.
"Having a place on campus, the morale for the team has been given a huge boost," Kappel said. "They walk in and this is becoming their new home and they're really enjoying it. I'm enjoying it as a coach. It's helping with the consistency of practices and really, it speaks a lot about the program as a whole."
He said the facility is a testament to the hard work and enthusiasm poured into the program by the predecessors on staff as well as the alumni gymnasts themselves.
"All of those athletes from years ago, at least from when I started, this is all a product of their work and everything they helped produce to give the school the confidence to go forward and give us our own facility here on campus," Kappel said.
He said the Club Sports Training Complex serves as an excellent recruiting tool, as does the Lady Flames' steady rise in performance levels, both regionally, placing third at Ohio State and first at JMU last spring, and at the NAIGC National Championships, where they finished fifth overall in 2019.
"The program itself keeps getting healthier every year, so it's easier to find athletes coming into the team and to grow the interest in the program," Kappel said.
This year's squad features an array of athletic ability throughout the roster.
"There's a lot of diversity with the skills we do, so it encourages us to perform our best," freshman Sophie Boon said. "We have our strong suits, so it's really cool to see everyone perform their best on their event."
Kappel is cautiously optimistic about what the future holds for the Lady Flames in the spring season.
"I really hope we get to compete," he said. "We're patiently waiting just like the rest of the world for things to kind of get back to normal. We really don't compete until the spring semester anyway — we do more in-house (competitions) in the fall — so we've got to find a way to keep them motivated and keep them working toward a goal. That will be the challenge right now, to keep them focused until we are able to compete and to keep them pushing to get those skills that they are going to need later on."
Greiner believes that Liberty has the depth of talent needed to challenge for the first national championship in program history when it travels to Albuquerque, N.M., for the April 14-17 event.
"We definitely have a really good team this year," she said. "We had a really great team last year and I'm sad we didn't get to showcase that at nationals, but we definitely have a shot this year. Whether we do have a season or not, we have a great team and I'm excited to see where it goes."
Video by Patrick Strawn/Club Sports Director of Video & Media
