RUHS Gymnasts Awarded $$$
For Service Project for Kids
By Sandy Vondrasek Cooch

Gymnast and budding grant writer Mikayla Dieffenbach demonstrates a back flip at the most recent "Balancing Act" performance at Chandler.

The Randolph Girl Ghosts gymnastics team was one of 20 high school girls’ teams nationwide to be awarded $2500 in a competitive grant program sponsored by the Women's Sports Foundation and Gatorade.

The Randolph squad was one 219 teams that applied for the $50,000 awarded.

Applicant teams had to organize a community service project to get girls involved in sports and physical activity.

RUHS gymnastics coach Felicia Dieffenbach, who has a day job directing a variety of programs at the Boys & Girls Club of the White River Valley, said this week that she read about the grant program in a sports magazine.

Dieffenbach quickly saw that a Boys & Girls Club program called "Balancing Act" that she started three years ago by would meet the grant requirements.

Balancing Act, offered in the fall and spring each year at the Dance Center studio, provides gymnastics classes to about 70 kids, from toddlers with their parents to 13 year olds.

RUHS gymnasts, including Dieffenbach’s daughter Mikayla, have assisted at the program since its inception.

According to Dieffenbach, the program, which is open to all kids, is ready to help "underserved" kids, who often miss out on extra-curricular activities such as this..

Thanks to scholarships from the B&G Club, all kids, regardless of family income levels, can enroll in the program and participate in a year-end performance recital, done with Dance Center dancers.

Besides teaching the fundamentals of gymnastics, "Balancing Act" helps young girls to develop muscle control and coordination, boosting self-confidence and "positive body imagery."

Balancing Act also functions as a "feeder program" for the RUHS gymnastics team.

"It paid off last year for the first time," Dieffenbach said. "We had two junior high kids just an eyelash away from being able to do backhand springs."

And, she pointed out, the new team members have the advantage of already knowing many of the upper-class gymnasts from Balancing Act classes.

For All Kids

Before coming to Central Vermont, Dieffenbach coached in the highly competitive USA Gymnastics circuit, in New York, New Hampshire, and Maine. In these programs, aspiring gymnasts build skills year-round, usually at private gyms, and rise in competitiveness, some going on to the Olympics.

Dieffenbach was ready to leave the intensity of that world when she came here.

Now she coaches the RUHS team in the winter, and runs Balancing Act for younger kids in the fall and spring. (She does plenty more, at the Boys & Girls Club, including running after-school programs in three towns and the summer day camp program in Randolph.)

The switch has allowed her to bring an entirely different approach to her coaching.

Her goal now, Dieffenbach said, is to make sure that every kid succeeds. The way to do that, she said, is by matching instruction to kids’ abilities.

This more relaxed approach system is yielding results, competitively, as well.

"The skills level on the high school team has started to climb," Dieffenbach said.

Dieffenbach noted that her daughter Mikayla wrote the grant application that brought the team its $2500 check.

Mikayla attends Bethel’s high school, which has no gymnastics team, so she competes with the RUHS team as an independent.

The RUHS girl gymnasts plan to use the grant to buy equipment and team sweatshirts.

Founded in 1974 by Billie Jean King, the Women's Sports Foundation seeks to advance the lives of girls and women through sports and physical activity. For more information, visit www.Womens
SportsFoundation.org.

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