This team is reaching for gold — but can’t afford new leotards

Cherokee Guido swung her legs and hips vertically above the lower uneven bar at Vare Recreation Center one recent evening as her coach steadied her. Guido had once mastered this handstand but lost it during a few months off. She wanted it back.

“I can’t be afraid to fall,” Guido, 19, coached herself out loud. Behind her hung a sign with rainbow borders: The way you speak to yourself matters.

Over the years, young gymnasts like Guido and their Vare coaches have learned to talk themselves to victory, first when they were practicing in a crumbling rec building before COVID, then when they were trekking from South Philadelphia to Brewerytown’s Athletic Recreation Center while Vare underwent renovations. They had gotten used to tumbling on mats that slipped around, without a regulation spring floor. They learned to train their minds as much as their bodies.

Throughout practice, the girls cheer one another on across the gym, quick to compliment teammates they say are more like sisters.

“Nice, Laila!” Ariah Buzzetto, 10, called out to her friend Laila Godfrey, 12, across the floor.

“How you practice is how you compete. If you practice lazy, then you’re going to compete lazy,” said 12-year-old Meela Muhammad, sounding very much like an inspirational poster.

Now, training in a new, state-of-the-art, 4,900-square-foot gym at the renovated Vare, which reopened in November 2024, the gymnasts have come a long way — but they’re still competing against private-club teams with sleek, matching uniforms who are better funded, and often better prepared for high-pressure USA Gymnastics (USAG) competitions.

“They have a lot more, bigger skills,” Guido said of their rivals. “At first, for me, I felt like how you go to a ball, you feel underdressed.”

Guido, for example, still wears an older purple leotard because she couldn’t afford a new one, while the rest of her team wears blue.

Now, Vare Gymnastics is trying to raise at least $6,000 as soon as possible through a GoFundMe for new jackets and gym bags for this year’s competition season, which begins with the Liberty Cup, a December USAG meet at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center.

If they don’t raise the money, they won’t be able to purchase full uniform sets. The team is also hoping to put some of the money toward financial aid for spring meets; most meets fill up by the end of the fall, and without the funds to enter, some girls won’t be able to attend.

Every club has a whole get-up. And we don’t. We’re getting whatever we can. You can still compete, but they just don’t feel good about it ... They’re so talented and they deserve better.

USAG is the national governing body for gymnasts; the Vare Rec team competes in Xcel, a program that offers more accessible competitions than the parallel track that funnels athletes to world competitions and the Olympics. There are only two other city rec centers in Philly that compete in USAG competitions: Kendrick Recreation Center in Roxborough and the Water Tower Recreation Center in Chestnut Hill.

Though Xcel is supposed to be more affordable, gymnastics is expensive: Entrance fees and uniforms cost hundreds of dollars per child, plus tuition for practice. At $100 per semester, Vare’s rate is far less than at those private gyms, but many parents still struggle to pay.

Marie McBreen, 42, has two daughters in the program. Her oldest enrolled 10 years ago after McBreen begged the coaches for three weeks to find her a spot. She’s seen how positive the team is for them: It has boosted their confidence and they’ve made close friends. But this year, with two kids in the program, she can’t afford to send both to all the competitions.

“Most of us don’t have a whole lot of money. You do the fundraiser to help so they don’t have to miss out,” McBreen said.

Head coach Kristin Smerker is not sure whether the team will raise enough in time.

“Every club has a whole getup. And we don’t. We’re getting whatever we can,” Smerker said. “You can still compete, but they just don’t feel good about it … They’re so talented and they deserve better.”

Smerker is a Northeast native, an encouraging, pump-you-up kind of coach prone to wearing black leggings and mismatched grip socks at daily practice. She built the program from the ground up, starting in 1998 with two floor mats she had begged from nearby gyms.

Nearly 30 years later, Vare Gymnastics has 130 participants, plus a nine-page waiting list. In 2013, the team joined USAG. Alongside Smerker, the team has a beam coach and also a floor coach, Smerker’s sister. In 2017, Smerker brought the team to a USAG meet and lamented to the other coaches that the girls didn’t have a permanent building and were shuttling all over the city for practice.

“Our team won first place,” she said, laughing. “Our kids have heart.”

Guido has been practicing gymnastics at Vare since she was 2 years old, and is among the best at the gym. Last year she graduated from high school and technically from Vare, but she is now back working on her skills.

“I love it already!” she called to her teammate Suadaa “Susu” Muhammad, as Susu debuted her new floor routine.

Along with team captain Elianna Olsen, Muhammad and Guido call themselves the “OG gymnasts” because they’ve been at Vare the longest.

Perhaps like many young gymnasts, Muhammad, 19, started with enormous dreams.

In the beginning, she said, “I thought I was gonna be bigger than Simone Biles.”

These days, she fits practice in three times a week, alongside radiology classes in her freshman year at the Community College of Philadelphia, and a night job pushing wheelchairs at the airport. She was also just hired as a coach for the Vare team. In her own training, she’s focused on her round off back handspring back tuck for her floor routine, trying to get it ready for December’s meet.

“Some coaches say to our coaches, ‘Oh, wow, you’re from a rec center? I’m surprised your girls are doing this good,’” Muhammad said.

In the early years, Muhammad used to get points deducted at meets for wearing her headscarf, she said; the judges considered it in the same category as jewelry and nail polish, which are prohibited. Her family and coaches wrote letters to USAG, and the rule was changed, Smerker said.

This year, Smerker wants the girls to be wearing their matching uniforms when they walk out to meet their rivals.

“I want them to walk in there and feel proud of themselves and feel confident,” she said. “It’s important to them and important to me to do everything to make it happen.”