Five years ago, Jodie Dunham started up the Wawota Gymnastics Club, after moving with her husband to Wawota from Winnipeg.
Dunham has much experience in rhythmic gymnastics, though she also coaches artistic gymnastics as well.
Though she is based in Wawota, Dunham teaches in Kennedy, Maryfield, Moosomin, and Virden as well, giving her a total of 250 students in all breaking down to about 50 in each town.
Dunham herself has experience on Team Canada with rhythmic gymnastics where she travelled to Australia, Portugal, London, and Colorado Springs to compete.
"It's the only thing I know," Dunham laughed as she spoke with The Observer.
Though Dunham has been working with the clubs in the area as a recreational activity, this year marked the very first competitive year of rhythmic gymnastics for the Wawota Gymnastics Club. This included youth being selected to compete for the southeast within the Saskatchewan Winter Games held in Prince Albert this past February as well as Provincials held in Regina.
"We ended up taking six from here to the Sask Winter Games," Dunham explained. "We wondered, 'Should we go?' 'Should we?' And finally decided, 'Yes, let's just go for it!'"
"I'm so glad we took them, it was an experience of a lifetime for them, especially coming from a small town it was a very big deal."
As youth practiced in the Wawota Parkland School gymnasium, Dunham laughed as she told the girls to have free time and most raced to grab a ribbon to work with.
"Ribbon is always everyone's favourite, but it is probably the most difficult one to do," Dunham said.
Dunham says that the communities have been very good in supporting the program and in Wawota she has two girls working with her as coaches in training: Skylar DeRoo and Lauren Wilson. The parents of the youth have also been very good as they train as judges to help because one judge is needed per six youth training.
Dunham feels the support comes with the fact that besides school sports there is very little for youth to take part in, right in Wawota.
"It's so nice to have something right here," Dunham stated. "Lots of girls go to Arcola for dance and are doing other things elsewhere."
Dunham's recreational classes begin at the age of four and welcomes youth all the way up, while the competitive team begins at the age of six. For the recreational group they get to participate in artistic gymnastics from September to December, while they then switch to rhythmic from January until May. The competitive rhythmic group in Wawota though practices and competes from September until May.
However, with Dunham being the only coach and only having coaches in training to help she is limited in how many more youth she can take into the program.
The competitive group, trains and travels together but they perform solos, while they do work on group projects as fun break from perfecting their solo routines.
"We held our show last Saturday [May 3] and the parents were amazed at how far the kids have come along," Dunham explained.
"We do need more training, but it's hard with everything else happening in the gym and this is really the only place in Wawota to practice."
Many in the area were unaware of rhythmic gymnastics until Dunham came to the area, which she explains is typical of many areas.
"You really need that one person that likes it because a lot of people don't know what it is," Dunham said. "Wawota knows now and other towns are catching on because they're now asking me to do rhythmic as well."
