On the Leech Lake Reservation, a revitalized gymnastics program is blooming hope and talent

CASS LAKE, Minn. - Inside an old car dealership, gymnasts navigate unconventional hurdles at practice. Coaches spot the girls for form and to ensure they don’t hit the ceiling.

This organized chaos is set to the melodies of Disney songs and pop music. A collection of hand-me-down mats and equipment from bigger, longstanding gymnastics programs around the state help this newer, smaller team grow.

And against all odds, they are soaring, all because their coach, Erin Reyes, decided to come back home.

“If there’s one person who can make it happen, it’s Erin,” said Kelli Mansavage, who works at the bank across the street from the gym in downtown Cass Lake, a town of 700 people in the heart of Leech Lake Reservation.

“She brings something to the community that is so inspiring and selfless. She is more than just a coach.”

Reyes, 41, loved the gymnastics program in her hometown, but it abruptly shuttered when she was in the fifth grade after her coach moved away.

She kept tumbling at a nearby gym in Bemidji and began coaching in Mankato after college. But it was always her dream to coach in Cass Lake.

Reyes opened Northern Dreams Gymnastics in 2017 after moving back home, and this season delivered validation.

Last weekend at the USAA Midwest Regional Meet in Madison, Wis., her three platinum-level gymnasts placed first and second in their respective age groups.

The teams competing at regionals from seven states had 15 or more girls on their roster. Cass Lake had three, meaning there was little room for error.

“If they get one fall, that’s it for us,” Reyes said.

They placed seventh at the Minnesota state championships out of more than 40 teams. At the Dream Catcher Invitational in Santa Fe, N.M., they took home first place overall.

These banners of achievement hang in their makeshift gym that decades ago served as a church. But this acrobatic congregation is outgrowing the space.

It spans 5,750 square feet with balance beams in the lobby. A typical gym is between 15,000 and 20,000 square feet.

Short ceilings provide just enough room for bar routines. It can’t fit a full vault runway, which the young athletes race down before they leap, twist and turn into the air, defying gravity — and expectations.

Many in Cass Lake still don’t know about the gym, like a best-kept secret, but that might not last long.

When Mariah Johnson, 12, assumes the mat to compete in vault, her best event, it’s like going from a pool table to a football field.

“I’m so used to being up close,” she said. “My coach Erin has to tell me to move back and do it. So it’s kind of hard.”

She thinks of her dad to get in the right mindset.

“I’ve just got to think of what he says to me to pump me up. He always says to me I’m going to be the next Simone Biles. And I know I can if I just really put all my heart into it.”

Mariah lives on the same street as teammate Serena Stoebner, 14, an an eighth-grader at Cass Lake. Mariah, a sixth-grader, goes to Bemidji.

They joined Northern Dreams at its inception.

“Those two girls, from the beginning, 100% I knew they were going to be really good,” Reyes said. “Just the natural athleticism and their drive. They had, like, that stature and they were both really strong.”

Serena scored in the nines out of 10 all season and said she works “to get the top score to encourage others to try to beat it.”

At meets for gymnastics and track, she said some student-athletes don’t even know Cass Lake is a town. “But we are building our recognition,” she said, noting that must be true if the Minnesota Star Tribune was there.

Kaitlyn Crane, 12, lives in Bemidji, but she left the city’s gymnastics program to compete in Cass Lake.

“It was like a night-and-day difference,” she said. “I really like it here. … I think having us three together made it a lot better for us … having a strong bond between us and then putting in the work at practice.”

If she wasn’t in gymnastics, Mariah said she would probably be “sitting on the couch watching movies with my dog.”

“If I didn’t really want to be here, then I wouldn’t have made it this far. But since I really want to be here and I really wanted to win, that made me go super far. And if I keep doing this and keep loving it, it’s gonna make me go farther in life.”

The elite three are the cool, older girls at practice. Young gymnasts just starting out at age 6 look up to them the way the three admire Minnesota’s own Mya Hooten.

Johnson wants to compete for the Minnesota Gophers, just like Hooten, whose journey to be the state’s best gymnast was paved with heartache and grit.

Cass Lake has more vacant storefronts than open signs.

“We have a Dairy Queen and a grocery store” Reyes said. “We were really hoping when we came into this building that it would help build Main Street up a little bit more. And we’re still hoping that 7½ years later that maybe somebody would open a pizza place.”

Instead, she opened a small takeout cafe in the gym. Three days a week, she can be found there wearing a hairnet, working with her mom over the lunch hour offering protein shakes, salads and wraps.

The cafe was born out of necessity in the pandemic to keep the lights on at the gym. She keeps it running because it’s a healthy option and helps cover costs.

Cass Lake is mostly known for basketball, not gymnastics, and several lunch customers on a recent afternoon didn’t know the success of Reyes’ team.

Opening her gym on main street was a chance to revitalize Cass Lake, a town with high rates of poverty, and where tragedy is frequent.

A 13-year-old girl recently died in a police chase fleeing her foster home. Two sisters ages 5 and 6 died in a house fire days before Christmas in 2021. Reyes, who had the girls in gymnastics, remembers collapsing after getting a text from their mother with the news.

Near the locker room is a colorful bench with a gold plaque reading “Forever in Our Hearts AceLynn & RaeLynn Seelye.”

Reyes looked at a photo of the sisters hanging on the wall and teared up talking about them and their mother, who established a scholarship to help other girls enroll.

“Cass Lake doesn’t have much. … This is a ray of hope for the kids,” said Barb Eckman, who brings her 11-year-old granddaughter to gymnastics.

“It’s given them something different to look forward to, something to grow into when they get older.”

Sheri Humphrey, 44, who went to school with Reyes and is now on the coaching staff, said Reyes keeps gymnastics affordable for families.

“The first several years she did it without paying herself. A lot of people don’t realize the sacrifices that she has gone through just to be able to keep the program going,” she said, tears welling in her eyes.

“It’s a very poverty-stricken area, and for these kids to have a positive thing to do, the relationship that they have with each other, it’s really a family.”

Humphrey, who works in Beltrami County children’s services, said coaching gymnastics “is kind of my therapy.”

Their former coach, Shannon Henning, 55, knows the feeling.

“I needed those kids just as much as they needed me,” Henning said. Her childhood was spent in foster homes and instability until she started coaching in Cass Lake.

Henning, who lives in Monticello now, knows the girls were devastated when she left.

Another coach didn’t step in until 20 years later.

She wasn’t surprised to learn it was Reyes.

Earlier this year, Henning watched the girls compete at a meet in St. Cloud.

“I‘m seeing these little girls from Cass Lake, their skill level, the way their routines were executed, they just stood out,” she said. “When I left the meet, I was shocked.”

The team took home first place.

Reyes has had to hire four coaches to keep up. In her first season, 13 girls joined. Now she has 35 and another 70 students in the after-school rec program.

She hopes to build a new gym on a vacant lot kitty-corner to Northern Dreams.

The space will be bigger with a permanent memorial for the Seelye sisters. And much higher ceilings.