The History of Stockport School of Gymnastics

The club was formed in 1986 by Frank Williams and Brenda Smith. It originally trained in Staleybridge but was unable to get sufficient training hours at the very busy sports centre. It was fortunate that Stockport Council were keen to start a gymnastics facility and helped to pay for the set up of the new club which was to be based at the Dialstone Recreation Centre in Offerton. Fittingly, the club was named Dialstone School of Gymnastics.

In the mid 1990s, the club started to look for new premises, and a committee was formed to attract Lottery money to build a centre of excellence in Stockport - covering all gymnastic disciplines. As part of that bid, it was essential to gain Stockport backing the club, so the name was changed to Stockport School of Gymnastics, and the leotard was changed to incorporate the Town's coat of arms.

The bid did not succeed not succeed and despite further attempts to find our own dedicated gymnastics facility, the club were still training in the Dialstone Recreation Centre at the beginning of 2012. 

In 2012, after 2 more unsuccessful planning bids, and the imminent closure of the Dialstone Centre, we finally attained the planning permission to set up a centre for gymnastics in Hazel Grove, and the work began in April to turn an old potato warehouse into a new gymnastics facility.

Whilst the work was being done on the new centre, SSoG made its new home at the new Dialstone Temporary Facility at Offerton High School, meaning that all club

 Pictured above is  Frank Williams in 1989 on the gym clubs exchange visit to Heilbronn in Germany.

  and recreational classes remained unchanged.   

During June 2012, all club sessions moved to Newby Road, and September 2012 saw recreational classes started at the new centre.

We now run classes every day of the week at the Newby Road centre, and also hold recreational classes at the Offerton Centre, allowing SSoG to deliver gymnastics to a vast number of children.  

In June 2013, we began our increasingly popular adult gymnastics sessions, and July 2013 saw our first parent and toddler sessions. 

During Autumn 2013 we hope to begin pre-school classes, and hopefully soon will be able to offer more classes for the under 5s and also more adult sessions too.

We are a child friendly club and have the quality 'Gym Mark' accreditation that covers  boys and girls between the ages of 3 to 18. 

We have a lot of activities, apart from gymnastics that you can read about on this website. But don't just read about us, come and join in and keep fit.

The club is a member of British Gymnastics, a Community Amateur Sports Club and a member of the Stockport Sports Council. It is run by a committee and is governed by a formally approved constitution.