How our club started
In late 2015 a group of parents and coaches worked together on a concept to create a gymnastics and exercise facility accommodating to the Eastern Suburbs of Christchurch. All of our programmes were designed to benefit the 'whole' community, people of all ages, abilities, backgrounds, and fitness levels. In addition, we envisaged providing gymnastics programmes for all children to develop important fundamentals of movement and exercise, and a potential pathway into higher level gymnastics or other sport-related activites within the Canterbury region.
There are real difficulties in maintaining a high quality coaching programme for most gymnastics clubs. The sheer complexity and cost makes it difficult for most clubs to achieve let alone to sustain in the long term. After investigating the concept of establishing a new facility in Christchurch that would maintain multiple community and gymnastics programmes AND make it available to all, was introduced and examined by GymSports NZ and the Board of Olympia Gymnastic Sports. Both organisations were supportive and Olympia offered to assist by allowing us to become a satellite to enable registration and affiliation to Gymsports NZ.
Upon receiving this level of support we managed to secure Joszi Ferencz and Svetlana Sazonova, two of New Zealand's top gymnastics coaches and set about setting up this community and sports facility.
The first step was to establish our name! We wanted to incorporate the word "challenge" into our name. We felt that the positive aspect of challenge really sums up what people of Christchurch, especially within the East, and gymnasts face everyday to become successful. We also wanted it to be a uniquely New Zealand name so we chose the name "Te Wero Gymnastics". In Te Reo Maori - Te Wero means The Challenge and the facility was born.
In mid-January 2016 we secured our location at 118a Shortland Street, Wainoni. The location is well placed to support East Christchurch as well as the wider Christchurch region. We are in the process of securing the equipment for the gym and are planning the build phase to put in certified training equipment and are on track to open in mid February or sooner if possible. In the meantime we are training at the Olympia facility.
We have incorporated our club, set up the management team and are currently building our recreational, pre-school, and steps programmes ready for the 2016 season.
What we really want to achieve, is to harness the potential of our children / gymnasts within the community and schools, and provide them quality programmes and experienced coaches, while providing a variety of opportunities to succeed in a friendly supportive environment that promotes community, improved physical well-being, fitness, healthy nutrition, challenge and fun, success, improved mental/emotional health and an amazing sense of family / whanau. We look forward to welcoming you to the Te Wero family soon!