RETURN HOME RETURN TO BUSINESS
August, 2009 www.huffnpuffgym.com
To: Parents of Huff ‘n Puff Students
We wish to welcome you to Huff ‘n Puff Fitness, Dance and Gymnastics Center, Inc. We are so happy that you have chosen for us to be a part of your child’s formative years.
We have been teaching children and adults in Jacksonville for over twenty-nine years. The business was started way back when I taught aerobics and then began dance classes in a rented location in Gregory Place Shopping Center. We soon outgrew our four different locations in Gregory Place, and in 1984, I bought this lot and built the first building of 10,000 square feet, which included the original gymnastics facility.
In September of 1996, my daughter Laurel returned to Arkansas from school in Dallas and once again began teaching dance and gymnastics at Huff ‘n Puff. The second year, she taught recreational gymnastics classes, and by the end of that year, she had students ready to begin working at a competitive level. Mr. Bobby also joined our recreational staff in the fall of 1996. In 1998, Coach Laurel re-established the Jacksonville Gymnastics Team and our new eleven-member team of Level Four gymnasts competed for the first time. Since then, our staff has grown and our team has grown. We now have gymnasts competing at Levels Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven Eight, Nine and working toward Ten. All of our levels were quite successful in the 2008-2009 competitive season. We had one of only two Level Nine Teams in Arkansas (it takes three gymnasts to compete as a team and we had five); we won the 2009 Level Nine State Championship with three gymnasts (the other two were recovering from injuries); and our Level Seven Team tied for 2009 State Championship. And Level Six Gymnasts won Second Place State Championship. Our record is good with the Level Six Team having won the 2008 State Championship Banner, which was our third State Championship Banner, with Level Five winning in 2007 and Level Six in 2006. We have lost track of how many trophies and banners the team has won over the years, and how many individual honors the gymnasts have won. But please read under Gymnastics for our 2008-2009 honors. We at Huff ‘n Puff are so proud of our competitive team, all levels. The gymnasts and coaches are all working very hard together and we will again compete as one of the larger teams in the state with nearly 65 gymnasts on team, Levels Three – Ten.
We held our Annual Dance Recital at Robinson Auditorium in Little Rock for our sixth year. Each year we have had bigger and better recitals with even more dancers and gymnasts performing to a packed auditorium. By recital time, many of our dancers feel very comfortable at Robinson, as we have danced at several dance competitions there yearly for several years.
This was also the sixth year for our growing dance company--Jacksonville Dance Company--to compete. The dance company has continued to grow and had a very successful competitive season this last year, winning Elite Top Firsts, Top or High Firsts, Firsts and special awards, and several times being in the top 10 acts for their age groups. The Company performed 17 dances, including jazz, tap, lyrical, hiphop and character in group dances as well as solos, duet and trio. This July, the Company competed in the Talent on Parade National Dance Competition in Branson, Missouri. Our dance groups perform better each year and we won Elite Top Firsts, Top Firsts and First for our numbers at Nationals. We also won several of the top spots in the Intermediate Category. It was a really good competition and we are so proud of our accomplishments this year.
We will hold our company dance auditions August 8th, and we expect our dance company to be even larger and better this year.
We are about to complete our seventh successful year of full-time summer daycamp. We are licensed by the state to be able to hold our daycamp. The children, who were broken down into age groups, attended gymnastics, dance and cheer classes. Also, many of them took advantage of the swimming lessons that we took them to at the Stonewall Pool. They completed many arts and crafts projects, had outside play and experienced wonderful camaraderie. They enjoyed their weekly trips to the library and special reading times and they especially enjoyed their weekly Friday trips to Stonewall Pool with pizza afterwards. Our “Fun Night at the Gym” remains an all-time favorite “happening” at the gym. And our Birthday Parties are so popular that they must be booked long in advance.
We continue to grow - we are listing over 179 hours of classes per week, including Team and Mini-Mite. We welcome you to visit our 19,000-square-foot gymnasium, which includes the large gym area with the three large pits for the trampoline, tumble track and foam training pit. We have four vaulting systems, four bar units (in addition to two training bars), 13 balance beams, and an extended spring floor. We also have the great access hallway for going to our back areas that include the enlarged dance room, the preschool gym, and our great cheer gym. We also have two dance rooms upstairs, one larger and one smaller, which have both been utilized to the greatest extent. We thoroughly enjoy being able to watch our students through all the viewing windows and also being able to cheer our gymnastics team on to victory from our own “peanut gallery” in the balcony.
Our website – www.huffnpuffgym.com has continued to grow with more than 83,000 hits since we started it several years ago. I thank each of you for your interest – it makes my late night-time hours seem really worthwhile. I appreciate your support.
If you are a newcomer, we welcome you. If you are returning, we thank you. And we also thank each and every one of you for your continued support. We take such immense pride in our students, our staff and our facility, and we sincerely hope that you will feel at home with us and have pride in us, too.
And I want to say again, if you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to call us at 985-1818.
Sincerely,
Sheryl Zimmerman Laurel Zimmerman Spears Owner Manager of Business Director of Programs