The Washington Men’s Gymnastics Foundation (WMGF) works as the financial backer for the team. It promotes the program and raises funds for the team. When the University dropped Men’s Gymnastics funding in 1980, coaches volunteered their time to keep the team going. In 1994, the WMGF formed to formalize this tradition. Since then, we have transformed the program into a goal-oriented, thriving and stable organization consisting of former gymnasts, friends of gymnastics, and parents.
Great gymnasts have come from our program. Gymnasts like rings specialist Jeff Johnson, who competed for the U.S in the finals at the World Championships held in Debrecen, Hungary in 2002.
Or Jeff Crockett, 20 time Collegiate All American, and 8 time Collegiate National Champion on various events and the All around.
Jeff is the only one in the world who has performed “the Crockett” a double twisting laid out jäger in February of 2006, winning the first ever New Skills Challenge held at the Winter Cup Challenge in Las Vegas.
Our goals include short-term annual fundraising as well as long-term goals such as developing a robust recruiting process and building our own junior program. Other activities include running the annual Washington Open, publishing regular newsletters, maintaining the team web site, operating a scoring service for other meets, offering scholarships to the team’s gymnasts, and coordinating other fund-raising activities. We achieve all this through volunteers who meet monthly to accept new tasks and plan future actions.