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Nashua School of Gymnastics reaches regionals

By George Pelletier - Milford Bureau Chief | May 1, 2021

NASHUA – Nashua School of Gymnastics, 30 Pond St., announced that Level 7 and 8 teams recently won state championship honors on April 16 and 6 of their 9 student athletes qualified for the regional finals, which will take place in Springfield, Massachusetts on May 1 and 2.

When NSG owner and coach Donna Tremblay was asked if the gym is back to normal, she replied, “God, no.”

“I’ve had to cut back,” she said. “I’m only running 30 percent of my class programs right now. Because of state and CDC guidelines, I can only have so many people in the building at one time.”

At this time, parents are not allowed in the building to watch. Tremblay said the only parents who are allowed inside are ones participating in a class with a small child, 18 months – three years of age, and even then, only one parent may participate.

“I have installed iPads around the gym so parents may watch the classes with a Zoom link,” she said. “The biggest thing is losing 70 percent of my students due to guidelines.”

Currently, all classes are at their COVID capacity and there is a wait list. Tremblay said she can’t add more classes at this time.

Last year, NSG closed in March and reopened in June.

“During the time that we were closed, we ran Zoom classes for our team classes and recreation classes,” she said. “In June, we asked parents who paid for classes to come in with their kids to make up their classes that they missed.”

Tremblay said she had students who trained 17- 20 hours per week; after COVID, those numbers started at 9 hours per week and grew from there.

“We wanted to start out slow,” she said. “They’ve probably been at their regular schedules since September.”

As for opening up this summer, Tremblay is optimistic.

“I know that New Hampshire just came out with a no-mask mandate,” she said. “But I’m still requiring masks in my facility. Most of the times, the ones affected by COVID were the younger students. So, we’ve had to quarantine quite a few times and we’ve had to close the gym a couple of times due to close contact.”

Disinfecting is a big part of the procedure before and after workouts.

“Normally, our class students used to be able to work through a circuit,” she explained. “There would be eight different stations. But now, what happens is they go to a station and stay on for three or four minutes and there are eight stations for eight kids in the class. Once they’re done their three or four minutes, everybody sits down, the staff disinfects everything and then they move to the next station and that goes on for the complete hour of the class.”

Tremblay added that her husband Scott will use the “fogger” disinfecting machine at night once students have gone for the day.

After regionals, Tremblay said that level 9 students can qualify for eastern nationals. Tremblay doesn’t have any level 9’s at the moment but hope that some of her students will move up.

“To qualify for regionals, New Hampshire sends what they call a ‘Super 7 team,’ with all New England and New York participating. We each send our top seven kids. So, the top seven scorers, no matter their age, they go to regionals representing their state. And the other students can qualify as all-stars, but they’re basically going to compete for themselves.”

In an ordingary year,m Tremblay said she would have students; with the pandemic, she estimates that she has half that number.

“Especially on Saturdays because people have to work during the week,” she said.

Tremblay grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, as one of ten children. Her father passed away when she was 15; her parents couldn’t afford private club gymnastic classes.

“I was fortunate enough that I had a gym teacher who was really into gymnastics,” she said. “And she used to run a sports night every year for our school. We went to school from kindergarten to the eighth grade. She would help us make up routines and we would put on a show each year.”

From there, Tremblay competed in high school.

And as the Nashua hasn’t removed its mandate for mask wearing, Tremblay said her students have adjusted to them just fine. She said it’s not that hard to perform a routine or workout while wearing a mask.

“When we first re-opened, it wasn’t a mandate that my athletes had to wear one while training,” she said. “But then in December, the mandate came out that everybody had to wear masks, including athletes. A lot of the students have become extremely comfortable wearing the masks. They almost feel safer.”

Tremblay won’t, however, allow student-athletes to tumble while wearing a mask because for one athlete, the mask went over her eyes and “really freaked her out.”

“Other than that, they have no issues wearing them,” she noted.

For more information, visit nsgonline.info.

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