News & Articles

Essendon Keilor Gymnastics Academy was founded by Christy Hemphill in November 2005, funded by a second mortgage and maxed-out credit cards, opening in Airport West with salvaged equipment and second-hand mats. Twenty years on, EKGA has 40 WAG and 32 MAG athletes in my database, with 36 combined medals at Level 8 and above across the two programmes. Katia Taranto has anchored the WAG squad at Level 10 across three straight seasons. On the MAG side, Geoffrey Fairservice and Patrick Deane have each climbed to Level 8 since 2024, and per the club's own announcement, both won gold at the 2026 Australian Championships, Fairservice on Rings and Deane on High Bar, a result that sits above anything my Victoria-only database can show.

Melbourne Acrobatic Gymnastics Academy opened in Cranbourne West in August 2018, the realisation of founder Stephanie Fuller's years-long ambition to run her own gymnastics programme. MAGA's acrobatic gymnastics squads were Runners Up for the VIC State Pennant in their first year of competition; by 2025, the Level 9 trio of Tessa Bottomley, Madison Mete, and Brianna Rawlings had won the Senior Victorian Championships outright, and Jana Ametoglou and Lachlan Renwick had swept the Level 6 titles across trials and championships. When Funtastic Gymnastics closed under difficult circumstances in late November 2025, MAGA opened its doors to the displaced coaches and athletes, among them Head Coach Janet Howe, bringing an entire Division 1 WAG programme into a gym that had been ready for exactly this for a long time.

PIT Gymnastics in Mill Park takes its name from the Preston Institute of Technology, the Bundoora campus where the club was founded in 1979, an institution that has since become RMIT. Forty-seven years later, the club runs approximately 750 gymnasts across programs from recreational to elite, and the data reflects something unusual for Victorian gymnastics: more MAG athletes than WAG. In our database, PIT has 35 MAG athletes and 23 WAG athletes. The MAG programme has accumulated 29 all-around medals at Level 8 and above, including Conor McGillivray winning the Junior International all-around at the 2025 Senior Victorian Championships with 75.85. At the 2026 Senior Vics, Adam Bowman won the Level 8 Open all-around with 66.6, Jamil Awad placed third and won three apparatus events, and Liam Duncan placed second at Level 6. The club also hosts its own annual MAG invitational, drawing competitors from across the Victorian circuit.

Y Geelong Gymnastics has been competing at the Victorian Championships since 1988, and the data reflects what three decades of steady building produces: 91 WAG athletes, 51 all-around medals at Level 8 and above, and 11 athletes who have competed at international levels in our database. At the 2026 Senior Victorian Championships, the club won team gold at both Level 8 and Level 10, with Ivy Alford sweeping the Level 8 individual titles and the international stream producing four medallists on the same day. Their MAG programme, smaller at 18 athletes, contributed a Level 5 Floor title from Hamish Goodin. In the weeks before the championships, the club lost Terry Cliff, the YMCA Executive Director who established the gymnastics programme in the late 1970s and ran the organisation until 2000.

MYC Gymnastics has been running gymnastics on the Mornington Peninsula since 1954. Their MAG programme leads Victoria in L8+ all-around medals, their Level 7 WAG coaching team won Gymnastics Victoria's Coaching Team of the Year, and four athletes qualified for the Level 10 National Squad.

BTYC Gymnastics has been running gymnastics in Melbourne's east for over 60 years, competing seriously at the top end of both WAG and MAG. Their men's programme has accumulated 71 AA medals at Level 8 and above, with nine athletes on the 2026 MAG State Team and head coach Lachlan Graham leading the state coaching staff.

Waverley Gymnastics Centre is Victoria's dominant elite WAG club. With an Olympian, the reigning Australian All-Around champion, 20 athletes at international level, and 27 state team selections in 2025 alone, the numbers tell a story that's hard to argue with.

A data analysis of over 3,400 Level 7+ Victorian WAG results finds that difficulty is a stronger predictor of competitive success than execution on most apparatus, but beam is the exception, elite clubs show no trade-off between the two, and a handful of athletes prove you can win on pure execution alone if it's exceptional enough.

A gymnastics dad whose daughter trains 19 hours a week reflects on why he doesn't mind if she isn't enthusiastic about school sport, and questions whether the assumptions behind mandatory PE fit every student equally.

Using trial and championship data, we break down how Victoria's 2026 WAG State Team and Border Challenge Team were selected, with three clubs (MAGA, Waverley, and YMCA Geelong) each landed seven athletes across the two squads.

Maddie Smith (Cheltenham Youth Club) claimed Level 10 by just 0.033 points over Annabella Geraghty, Estelle Warnes (Chamford) capped an unbeaten 2026 campaign at Level 9, and Cerano Tosone swept five of six Level 7 apparatus events, a weekend to remember across WAG, MAG, and Acrobatic Gymnastics.

The 2026 Waverley Judges Invite delivered on May 10–11, with Eclipse Gymnastics Ringwood's Indianna Gilson and Isobel Myles claiming both Level 10 titles, Estelle Warnes winning Level 9 after a remarkable year-on-year jump, and both team competitions settled by under a point.

A widely-shared YouTube Shorts clip claims Maria Paseka 'quit' at the 2012 Olympics, but what you're actually seeing is a deliberate team strategy called a 'scratch', and it was entirely intentional.

Arianna Nadiu (MAG Academy) won Level 7 by just 0.034 points at WAG Trial 2 and Border Challenge Trial 2, while Sophie Strano (Jets) led L8 Division 1 with 47.332 and Emma Hale posted a 13.033 on bars.

Australia has announced full men's and women's squads (senior & junior) for the Oceania Championships in Brisbane, plus selected athletes and coaches for upcoming events in Slovenia and China.

At the Osijek World Cup, Hamelin (FRA), Mesiri (GRE), and Rodrigues Barbosa (BRA) each successfully performed new Uneven Bars skills, meeting the criteria to have them officially named and added to the Code of Points.