![Amir Muhammad: “I was a junior in high school. [Minnesota Coach Mike Burns] invited me onto the team when I didn’t have a lot of opportunity to compete in college.”](https://www.minnpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/AmirMuhammad940.png)
Parking was tight around Humboldt High School, on St. Paul’s West Side, on a Saturday night in mid-February. Latecomers bypassed the packed school lot and hunted for street parking in the neighborhood. Some ended up more than a block away.
They weren’t coming for a school play, a basketball game or parent-teacher conferences. A sign at the door of the gym, anchored in two plastic barrels, told the story in maroon block letters: “Minnesota Mens Gymnastics.”
Surprised?
Three years after the University of Minnesota eliminated its century-old men’s intercollegiate gymnastics program, a different sort of program lives on – something between NCAA Division I and club, one that happens to be the best in the country.
Minnesota is one of 15 teams competing in the Gymnastics Association of College Teams (GymACT), a nationwide organization founded in 2018 to counter the alarming trend of NCAA schools dropping men’s gymnastics. Only 15 NCAA programs remain, largely from the Big Ten Conference (Illinois, Michigan, Nebraska, Penn State and Ohio State) and service academies (Army West Point, Navy and Air Force). Iowa dropped its program for financial reasons the same year Minnesota did. Both now field GymACT teams.
Inside the Humboldt gym that night, the Gophers, Hawkeyes and Northern Illinois competed in a tri-meet, rotating through six apparatuses with junior gymnasts from local clubs mixed in. Admission was $10, and volunteers sold Minnesota-themed hoodies ($35), t-shirts ($30) and knit hats ($25) at the door.
Scores were tabulated and posted on a flat-screen television on the competition floor. With classic rock and country favorites blasting non-stop from the sound system, about 300 fans – some in Iowa black and gold, but most in Minnesota maroon and gold – reacted enthusiastically to every routine. When a Minnesota kid stuck a landing, you couldn’t hear the person next to you.
By the end of it, Minnesota Coach Mike Burns, who ran the Gophs’ intercollegiate program for 17 years before shifting to this GymACT club, had lost his voice, as usual. Burns and his 23 gymnasts, 14 of them freshmen, spent three hours the night before setting up all the equipment, rented from a company in Milwaukee. Burns thought they looked tired, contributing to several uncharacteristic mistakes.
Still, Minnesota scored 312.80 points to win the meet, to Iowa’s 287.70 and Northern Illinois’s 281.75. Minnesota has been No. 1 in the national GymACT rankings almost all season, with its most important competitions ahead – the East Conference Championships this Saturday, and Nationals, May 11.
“The good thing is, we’re finding a way to make it happen,” Burns said. “We’re finding a way to give these kids an opportunity they otherwise would not have. To continue to be able to do it at the University of Minnesota is just outstanding.”
Minnesota’s intercollegiate gymnastics history dates to 1903, when a men’s squad founded by Dr. Louis Cooke, who also coached men’s basketball, won the Big Ten title its first season. Overall, the program earned 21 Big Ten team championships while producing 19 individual NCAA champions, dozens of All-Americans and two U.S. Olympians – John Roethlisberger (1992, ’96 and ’00) and Shane Wiskus (2021).
When the U dropped men’s gymnastics, along with men’s tennis and indoor track after the 2020-21 season, boosters and supporters of all three vowed to fight on to get them restored. The effort continues, though the university’s Board of Regents has shown no interest in revisiting the decision. Burns himself sought an at-large seat on the board, and his name got as far as the state legislature before losing out to former Allina Health CEO Penny Wheeler.
Through it all, Burns endeavored to keep college gymnastics going in Minnesota. The university let the program remain in its cramped practice space in venerable Cooke Hall, built in 1934 and renamed for Louis Cooke in 1938. Plush, it’s not. Poke around a bit and you’ll find horsehair-filled mats under the current flooring. There’s no room for a vault runway or floor exercise mats, so gymnasts practice those disciplines elsewhere.
“It’s a broom closet,” said junior Kellen Ryan of Janesville, Wisc., the nation’s top-ranked all-arounder and nephew of former Twins general manager Terry Ryan. “You work with what you have.”
GymACT teams receive no scholarships or financial support from their universities. To raise money here, Roethlisberger and fellow gymnastics alumni created Friends of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics (FMMG), a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and went to work.
Through philanthropy, gate admissions, apparel sales and other sources, Burns said FMMG raised $120,000 to $140,000 each of the first two years. That covered travel costs, off-campus facility rentals for home meets, various other expenses and a modest monthly stipend for Burns, 65. Burns no longer drives an Uber or delivers packages to make ends meet, though he still judges meets for extra money.
“I’m able to keep food on the table and gas in the car,” he said.
Through word of mouth, the roster grew. Minnesota finished fourth nationally in GymACT in 2022 with a half-dozen or so kids, and repeated that with 13 gymnasts last year. Before this season, Burns said 45 high-schoolers from as far as California contacted him about the program. Only four of the 23 gymnasts on the current roster are from Minnesota, and many qualified for financial aid.
“This is the easiest recruiting I’ve ever done,” Burns said. “People are knocking down the doors to come here.”
Take freshman Amir Muhammad of King George, Va. When Muhammad attended the 2021 Olympic Team Trials in St. Louis as a spectator, he spotted Burns, flagged him down and gave him his business card.
What high school kid carries business cards? One who’s also an author. Muhammad wrote and illustrated a children’s book, “Julian the Gymnast” and “The High Bar Debacle,” available on Amazon.
Muhammad said he knew of Burns and Minnesota from following college gymnastics. At the Trials, he said he hurdled chairs to talk to him.
“We ended up setting up communication to speak with each other,” said Muhammad, studying to be a registered dietician. “I was a junior in high school. He invited me onto the team when I didn’t have a lot of opportunity to compete in college.
“Back then, I had this feeling, and I can’t really describe it, that Mike would be the coach for me. It’s all on his strength of character and coaching. I’ve grown a lot more since I got here.”
Sophomore Owen Frank of Pownal, Maine chose Minnesota after a scholarship opportunity to Army West Point fell through. He said he never heard of GymACT until his parents learned about it from other parents on his West Point recruiting trip. His choice came down to Iowa, where he once attended a gymnastics camp, and Minnesota.
“Even though Iowa has a super nice gym, and our gym is pretty dinky and small, Mike Burns makes it all worth it,” said Frank, ranked among the top 10 nationally on high bar and parallel bars. “And so, I want to go where he is. That’s how I ended up here.”
Burns took 11 gymnasts to the recent GymACT All-Star Meet in Albuquerque, roughly seven more than he expected when he budgeted for the trip. The future of the program certainly seems brighter than Burns thought three years ago. In all its years in the NCAA the U never won a national team title, finishing second four times, most recently in 2018. But now, a national GymACT championship appears within reach. Defending champion Arizona State stands as the U’s biggest challenger.
“It kind of shows what’s going on in Minnesota and Cooke Hall; what we’ve been able to do after the U kicked us to the curb and told us to go away,” Burns said. “We’re a program that’s benefiting the U in some small way. We’re not curing cancer, but we’re providing opportunities for people to better themselves.”
Editor’s note: The story has been updated to reflect the team has 21 Big Ten team championships, not 17 and it club is operating as a 501(c)(3), not a 503.
