As Honiton Gymnastics Club seeks to secure its long-term future, former international gymnast James Reddy spoke about what the club means to him.
One of Honiton’s much-loved clubs is entering the New Year on uncertain footing.
Honiton Gymnastics Club has been thrown into turmoil after it was evicted from its Ottery Moor Training base, so the land could be sold for housing.
Despite the community to rally to help, hundreds of its members have been unable to train - despite the club filling rooms and halls at Honiton Community College, the town’s Community Use Building and leisure centre.
However, the club continues to smile in the face of adversity and has won the hearts of many supporters in Honiton, as it tries to secure its long-term future.
The club has also secured the support of the Resident’s sister title, the Midweek Herald, which has launched a six-month campaign to put the spotlight on the key people at the club, and what the organisation means to its members and their families.
One such member, James Reddy, sat down with the Resident to share a bit about his life and the ongoing service he commits to the gymnastics club each day.
So James, before we start, tell us a bit about yourself.
My name is James Reddy and I am a former international acrobat who finished fifth in the 1996 World Sports Acrobatics Championships. I competed in the men’s four display with Gary Shaw, John Green and Neil Griffiths in Riesa, in the former East Germany. I was born in Darwen, Lancashire, in 1975 ,and became involved with gymnastics at the age of nine by joining its local club, which was one of the first acrobatic gymnastics club in the country. When I was 18, I joined Wakefield Gymnastics Club while I was at Leeds University, which is still one of the most successful clubs in the country. When I was 19, I competed for Great Britain in a senior men’s pair. The highlight of my career was competing in the world championships in Riesa. I continued as an international gymnast for eight years and was in the GB squad for 10 years.
How did you come to Honiton?
I met my wife Helen, who moved to Honiton as a nine-year-old, in 2005 when I was on a coaching course. She was my tutor at the time and we just kept in contact after that! I was living in Cambridge, so for the next 18 months, I was trying to find a good job in the South West. We then moved to Exeter in 2007 and then Honiton in 2015. When I moved to Devon, I joined the team that was already running Honiton Gymnastics Club. Now, the club is run by a board consisting of myself, Helen, Emma Smith, Pam Burns and Melissa Pendrick.
Tell us a little more about Honiton Gymnastics Club.
The club has been running since 1983. When its original coaches left in 2001, it was thought it was going to shut down. That’s when Helen, Pam and Emma decided to take on the running of the club. They changed it from a predominantly artistic and general gymnastics club to solely an acrobatics gymnastics club, and started to build it from there. Twelve years ago, when I came along, we had 44 gymnasts who were at regional level with a few winning medals at national level. Since then, we have grown the club from 44 members to more than 500. We moved from Honiton Leisure Centre to Rainbow Superstore in August 2016, because we outgrew the space we had and were looking for a place that would allow us to leave our equipment out, and increase the amount of specialist equipment we could provide.
What does Honiton Gymnastics Club mean to you?
It’s not just part of my life – it’s the focal point of my life and the lives of everybody else who is an integral part of the club. We have gymnasts come here who work between ten and 15 hours a week. But it’s much more than that – it’s a family and we have seen that, since we started to grow and take on more gymnasts, the majority of whom are non-competitive. We feel like we have become more of a family because we have taken on people from all walks of life, all levels of ability and welcome parents, friends and family through the door. We have big plans to expand and offer more for more diverse sections of the community, such as disabled gymnastics and other minority groups. We would also like to do more with old people and those with memory problems, such as dementia and Alzheimer’s, which is a big part of British Gymnastics’ current remit. That’s a big part of what we want to do.
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