Van der Stel gymnasts have been tumbling, jumping and twirling for the past five decades.
The Van der Stel Gymnastics Club (VDS), housed at the local sport facility that shares its name, has produced many well-known gymnasts over the years.
“I have more than one degree, was a teacher, a lecturer, but nothing makes up for seeing the difference we can make in a child’s life by teaching them some of the skills they see on TV,” club coach Annette Nel said.
“A child that cannot do a cartwheel and at the end of the year can do a beautiful one – pure joy! Then VDS is in the centre of town, we have the facilities and coaches and mouldable clay (children) to produce where their dreams lead them.
“Sport is the door to every persons future. One does not have to be the top, but any place on the ranking makes one a better human. Vannie Edwards, a top American coach, was a normal athlete, so nothing defines one but the self, and hopefully we can help everyone who passes through our hands be a better self.”
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Humble beginnings
Founded in 1975 by her and Karien Verster at a time when gymnastics in the Boland was few and far in between, less visible, with limited support, the club started with no apparatus. It was merely the vision and energy of 200 gymnasts.
VDS was originally part of Stellenbosch University (SU), but larger facilities were needed, and a sports facility with a big hall and five badminton courts were being built.
Nel was a badminton player and when her club moved she moved the gymnastics as well. “We had bankies, tables and 14 fillers used by the aerobics ladies,” she recalled.
Nel has long been sportswoman playing for the first hockey team and teaching 14 aerobics class; it was the 1970s after all. With 200 kids, 10 volunteers and plenty of parents to help, the club started.
SU professor Kathy Myburgh’s parents were among those who helped invest in the club. She was part of the national gymnastics team in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Along with Myburgh, now a professor of physiological sciences, are former national team members who called VDS home, including Gerhard Swiegers, Joel Wade Manuel, Riaan van Zyl and world champions Jo-Anne Nelson, Riaan Terblanche and rhythmic gymnast Stephanie Sandler, who represented South Africa at the 2004 Olympic Games.
Nel also also made the Olympics, invited to be a judge in 2008 and 2012.
Over its 50 years the club has waged its own battles and struggles, such as having to move its pit so the hall could be hired out, a long lockdown as well as diminishing recognition as an indoor sport.
Despite it all, the club continues to produce high quality gymnasts, Nel declared. “In 2000 we started an outreach programme, Pinkie Yolisa, at Ikaya Primary [in Khayamandi] to develop talent. Over the years some excellent gymnasts have come from this school project.”
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A club for all
One of the main objects, she said, remained to help children learn essential skills.
“Over the years physical education has dropped to second or even third place as the focus of attention at schools. Now they’re superseded by cellphones and computers, which have first place. Children cannot do rolls and cartwheels, or handstands, nor can they climb trees. These are almost basic child movements, so part of what we do is also to improve the motor skills of children.”
“As a parent with children who have trained at the Van der Stel Gymnastics Club since 2013, and one of them is a beginner coach, what I love about the club is that children still get individual attention, regardless of whether they are competitive gymnasts or not,” said Lizelle Rademeyer, a team member.
“It really is a club for the community, where children from 13 different primary schools and four different high schools in and around Stellenbosch get to train, grow and interact. The reality is that many parents do not have the means or time to travel out of town for their children to train.
“This is why facilities at Van der Stel create an opportunity for so many children to take part in sport disciplines that they would otherwise not have been able to do.”
Nel said she hoped the club leaves a legacy of producing quality at competitions and gymnasts who value good work, discipline and caring for others, believing life to be the sum total of what one puts in. VDS is a caring club, she said, where money has its value, but not at the expense of gymnasts’ well-being.
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