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Growing up as a competitive gymnast, Victoria Gomez had dreams of opening her own gym. As a college student, she and her parents researched what it would take to get one off the ground.
“The doors just didn’t open,” recalls Gomez, who opted for work as a gymnastics coach after graduating from LSU with a degree in education.
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“Everyone was like, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ And it is hard. But when I show up to work every day, it doesn’t feel like work.”
Victoria Gomez
But six years later, Gomez had an epiphany. She walked away from a full-time coaching job at a local gym because of philosophical differences.
“I called my husband and said, ‘I just quit my job and I want to open a gym,’” says Gomez, who was 27 at the time. “He said, ‘Let’s make it happen.’”
The couple’s $740,000 investment included purchasing a 10,000-square-foot former kids party center on Perkins Road and converting it into a training center. Gomez sourced equipment through a connection provided by LSU gymnastics head coach Jay Clark, whom she knew from her participation years earlier with former LSU head coach D-D Breaux’s club team. She named the venture Edge Gymnastics Training Center, with a mission to help kids strive for greatness in some facet of life, no matter their future in gymnastics.
“We want to develop great athletes, of course, but I also want to develop great people,” Gomez says. “I want our impact on these kids to take them further than their time in the gym.”
A group of 30 gymnasts followed Gomez when she first opened. Numbers have since grown to almost 500 students. Thirty staff coaches help manage multiple training sessions, many of which take place simultaneously. The business deploys a methodical logistics plan to keep class segments timed to the minute so that athletes can rotate through each apparatus without delay.
Staffing has been the biggest challenge, but Gomez says she has combatted that in two ways. One was hiring retired LSU gymnastics assistant coach Bob Moore. The other was better orienting and shadowing new hires.
“As a mom, I know how important it is to get the staffing right,” Gomez says. “People are entrusting us with their kids.”
