INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – Incline Village’s first ever competitive gymnastics team is heading out to compete in Reno on Saturday, Jan. 22. The competition will be the first for the team and serves as a huge milestone since they were formed almost two years ago.

Coach Reghan Phillips has been with the girls from the beginning and is thrilled to see how far they’ve come as a team.

“It’s really remarkable,” said Philips. “Gymnastics, for me, is the foundation of all sports. Watching the girls grow is really unique and cool, and being their coach, I have developed such a special relationship with each of the girls. I get to watch them grow not only physically, but mentally.”

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The team will consist of seven girls for the actual competition, but there are as many as 60 girls in the program currently. In order to be eligible to compete, Phillips had to obtain a number of USA Gymnastics certifications, including a Safe Sport Education certification. She also had to ensure that every athlete is also registered to be eligible to compete.

“Our team name is Incline Gymnastics and we are one hundred percent registered as a team, I guess you could say,” said Phillips. “So it’s really cool and exciting. This actually just got put into place this last summer. I worked on trying to get this program up and running to get them registered with the USA Gymnastics in order for us to compete. Our first competition is Saturation, and this is a first-time competition for a lot of these girls.”

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The girls will be attending the Flips Invitational at the Grand Sierra Resort. Many parents are excited to see a program in Incline Village come to fruition and allow the girls to compete on a larger level, given before this team was formed, there were no teams on the North Shore.

“There’s been a need for gymnastics in the North Lake Tahoe area for a long time,” said local basketball coach Tim Kelly. “Every kid was going to Truckee and Truckee runs a great program, but it’s not always easy for us in Incline Village and Kings Beach to always go over [Hwy] 267. So we’ve been trying to start gymnastics in Incline for a long time.”

Kelly has been helping start the program on the administrative side of things, and said it’s been a great ride so far.

“It’s really neat to see the coaches being so excited about this next level of gymnastics being stepped into in the Recreation Center,” said Kelly. “I think it’s going to be really neat to see that the young ladies competing against from all over.”

Originally, the program was put together through the Incline Village Recreation Center with Phillips and Charlotte Baker, and Kelly said without them, it wouldn’t have come together at all.

“They put all the work in to go get certified and make this a legal club,” said Kelly. “There’s a lot that goes into what the coaches did for the young ladies to compete next weekend.”

Phillips said none of the girls would be able to compete without the generous contributions of the parents of the girls in the programs, along with the contributions of the program’s sponsors.

The sponsors include Susie’s Scoops and Village Toys, Drink Coffee Do Stuff, Digital Throttle, and the Dave and Cheryl Duffield Foundation.

To learn more about the Incline Gymnastics club, visit yourtahoeplace.com/events/girls-gymnastics.

Miranda Jacobson is a staff writer for the Tahoe Daily Tribune, a sister publication of the Sierra Sun