When the $15.5 million Gymnastics Performance Center officially opened in Athletes Village with a ribbon-cutting in mid-January, Gopher gymnasts swarmed the space and reacted with something between elation and ecstasy. A video from Gopher Athletics caught snippets of their initial thoughts:

“My heart’s pounding. This is like the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” 

“Sleepover, please!”

“It’s a good day to be a Gopher.”

Months later, the athletes and coaches are still basking in the glow of their new dream home. “For a while, it still didn’t feel real. It felt like we were visiting somebody else’s space and that we were guests,” says Head Coach Jenny Hansen, herself a former U of M gymnast. “It’s so fun to come every day and walk into this space; it just feels so welcoming.”

The first things you notice are the natural light, aided by 15 south-facing windows; the overall size (almost 13,000 square feet); and the volume of equipment and landing areas including, for the first time, foam landing pits. Steps away from the practice space are a training room, a team room for meetings and for hanging out, and a first-class locker room. The pièce de résistance there: A glass door at each stall opens to a descending hanging bar with a colorful complement of leotards.

Compared to their previous digs at Peik Gymnasium—a space devoid of windows, air conditioning, or any other comforts—it’s like night and day, almost literally. (Peik was the gym for University High School, closed in 1982, which dates it even more.)

Hansen lobbied for a new practice space since becoming head coach in 2015, and now has “every training device we could brainstorm as a staff to help us train our athletes at the highest level,” she says. “I’m very grateful for [Athletics Director] Mark Coyle. Right after he was hired, he came to Peik Gym and I showed him around. He said, ‘This is a need. ... We’re gonna make it happen.’”

Not surprisingly, the Gymnastics Performance Center has already elevated recruiting efforts. “I’ll just say that commitments were easier for us to get this year than probably the last few years, and [recruits] came as we were building it,” says Hansen. “I know a ton of Minnesota kids can’t wait to get there and see the space themselves.” Sarah Moraw, a senior from Holland, Michigan, is elated. “I feel like that was one of the pieces where we just fell short from a lot of the other big teams,” says Moraw, who won the Big Ten balance beam title in 2024. “We have the skills ... we have the culture, we have the coaches to get us there. It was kind of just that one drawback where I think a lot of the recruits were like, ‘Oh, the facility.’ But now you can’t complain at all; it’s brand-spanking new!”

The center is an apt reward for a program that has excelled in Hansen’s tenure: The Gophers won the Big Ten regular-season title in 2016 and a Big Ten championship in 2021. They’ve competed in the NCAA championships every year since 1995 (minus the Covid year of 2020) and advanced to the NCAA semifinals in 2016, 2021, and 2022. The 2024-25 team took third in the Big Ten Championships and made the NCAA Regional Finals for the fourth time in five seasons, and Hansen was named North Central Region Coach of the Year.

Home meets at the Maturi Pavilion have become festive and fan friendly, with large crowds, a section of chanting superfans, and a lights-down, phone-lights-on team “dance-off” before the Gophers begin floor exercise.

The energy that lifts them at the Pav has now permeated their practice space. “Moving from Peik and into here, it was like our dreams are coming to reality, in a way,” says Moraw. “I think endless opportunities await us in this space.”

Adds Hansen: “This is something that we’re trying to continue to showcase and share with everybody, and it’ll be exciting for a very long time. It won’t wear off.”

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