Four years after being dropped by the U of M, men’s gymnastics team has a home
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It is a day University of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics head coach Mike Burns will never forget. The program he had poured his heart and soul into for 16 years would be dropped by the university.
“It was Sept. 10, 2020,” Burns recalled. It was the first semester back after the disruption of COVID-19. Burns was asked to join a Zoom call where he was told the news. The program would be cut beginning in 2021.
Burns tried to fight the decision. When he realized he wasn’t going to win, he decided to turn that fighting energy into keeping the program alive even though he was out of a job.
“We just decided that if there was ever a chance of us being reinstated, we’d have to maintain a program,” he said.
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Burns drove for Uber and made deliveries for Shipt to help pay his personal bills.
The nonprofit arm of the club, Foundation Gymnastics, stepped up to fully fund the program, with a generous alumni base and fundraisers helping pay the bills of about $125,000 a year.
But there were other challenges.
The school gives student-athletes in club programs less consideration for practice time, meaning students must independently stay on top of both their education and their sport.
Initially, the club team was able to stay in their campus practice facility in Cooke Hall. But ahead of the 2024-2025 season, the gymnasts were kicked out. That season, the team drove 30-40 minutes, one-way, to various facilities around the metro to practice.
“It was a little bit demoralizing,” said Caleb Gurman, who was a freshman that year. He had moved from California after being recruited by Burns.
Since 2021, the U of M Men’s Gymnastics Club has been part of a league called the Gymnastics Association of College Teams, or GymACT. It’s made up of 16 teams that have club affiliation with a university or teams that represent a regional area.
In the 2021-2022 season, the team’s first year without school support, the club placed fourth at GymACT Nationals. The next season, they took home the national title. In 2024-2025 they took second place despite not having their own practice facility.
Gurman is hopeful the new facility will be the glue the team needs to get back on top.
“I feel like I’ve been able to train harder because I’m spending not as much time on the road,” said Gurman.
The new 14,000-square-foot facility is in the Fairview Business Center in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood. On the outside, it’s inconspicuous and looks like a warehouse. But inside it’s home to everything from dance to drum classes. It’s a much shorter commute. And because it’s on the Metro Transit Green Line, it’s accessible to campus.
The space has 20-foot-high ceilings, tall enough for the athletes to spin on the high bar and the rings. The team spent months moving in equipment and assembling its new facility. Coach Burns turned to Facebook Marketplace to barter for other furnishings, like chairs in the lobby area and equipment for the recreational part of the gym that will soon be open for kids classes.
“It’s been labor of love, for sure, for all of us involved,” Burns said. That love is displayed across two walls of the gym: 36 banners celebrating every championship the team has won dating back to 1903. All have a Big Ten or NCAA label – except one. The GymACT national title hangs proudly right below the 1903 banner, a symbol of where the team started and how far they’ve come.
Hanging those banners in the new facility is what made the space a home for Burns.
“I actually got a little emotional,” Burns said while standing beside the wall of maroon and gold. “You only really need two things to have an athletic program: You need to have a gym. You need to have a coach. So we got coaches and now we have a gym, so we got a program.”
Now, five years since learning the program was being dropped and in his 45th year of coaching gymnastics, Burns said the focus isn’t on getting reinstated in the NCAA. Rather, it’s on making sure the team and the new space are successful. He thinks the way his program is run could be a model of non-revenue sports at the college level.
Burns will be showing off the team and the new facility this Saturday with a kickoff to the season. It’s the annual Maroon & Gold Intrasquad meet, where the team of 26 will split into two and face off. For Burns, it’s a dress rehearsal, a chance to see where the team is at and decide what it will take for the club to add another banner to the wall.
Use the audio player above to listen to an in-depth conversation with MPR News host Nina Moini and Mike Burns.
