WATCH ABOVE: Les Gymnastes de l’Ile may train some champion athletes, but it doesn’t have its own facilities – and a GoFundMe campaign isn’t garnering any donations. Billy Shields reports.
ILE-PERROT – Eva Rucka wants to share one of her passions from her home country with her daughter.
Yet, when she settled in the Montreal area from her native Poland, she found almost no one knew about acrobatic gymnastics.
So in 2000, she founded Canada’s first acrobatic gymnastics club in Ile-Perrot, Les Gymnastes de l’Ile.
Her daughter, Victoria Cichalewska, became a third of a trio who were “first in the history of this sport to represent Canada and Quebec…I’m very proud.”
Rucka (pronounced RUT-ska) is proud of her success with the sport – it has competed in three world championships since it started – but club members are still searching for a permanent space to practice.
“Every time we have to train we have to pull out the stuff and put back the stuff,” said club president Danielle Tremblay.
“It’s a lot of work and it can damage the equipment.”
Acrobatic gymnastics emphasizes balance and tempo.
Some routines are set to music, some involve intricate balance manoeuvres like human pyramids, while others involve somersaults and twists.
Though it’s quickly gaining worldwide acceptance, it isn’t an Olympic sport yet.
Parents like Tremblay are devoted to it, but say that a lack of a permanent home for the club is hurting efforts to train.
A suitable space would need a high ceiling, and would allow the club to permanently set up the equipment necessary to practice.
READ MORE: Who are Les Gymnastes de l’Ile?
The club is trying to get a $250,000 GoFundMe campaign off the ground.
So far, however, the response hasn’t been quite what the club hoped for.
“We could offer way more than we do now,” Tremblay said.
“It’s to have a better place to train our elite athletes.”
Rucka said in 16 years the club has grown by leaps and bounds.
“We started with 30 kids,” she said.
Even with these constraints, Rucka’s daughter Cichalewska recalls what it was like to compete on the world stage for Canada.
“We didn’t have anyone to look up to,” she laughed.
“We were the guinea pigs.”
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