John & John: Flip Fest's Dynamic Duo
John & John: Flip Fest's Dynamic Duo
As we continue with our camp coverage, we bring you the story behind one of the most beloved gymnastics camps in the country—John Macready and John Roethli
As we continue with our camp coverage, we bring you the story behind one of the most beloved gymnastics camps in the country—John Macready and John Roethlisberger's Flip Fest. We sat down with these two animated camp owners and learned more about what they have created in Crossville, Tennessee, and the passion they have for fun, family and growing gymnasts for life.
Q: First just tell me how the idea of Flip Fest came about…
John R: “Well, what I did first was I really thought about this and what my idea was to have a camp. And then I thought you know, I should invite John Macready…” (laughs)
John M: “It’s a really long story I don’t know if you have this much film, but basically, I got into a smaller camp, met my wife, moved away from California. It was kind of a hobby at first, it just kept growing and growing and growing…and I finally decided I was either going to do this and go all the way, or maybe not. So I was going through those thoughts, and I called this guy (John R), and I said ‘Hey man, I’m thinking of taking this to the next level, getting some land, getting the lake, doing the whole thing—do you want in?’ and he said ‘no.’ And then a week later he called back and said ‘yes.’”
John R: “I wasn’t sure what the next level was. He was very vague, he was like ‘the next level’…but yeah we decided to do it and here we are.”
Q: If you had to pick, what is your favorite part about running a camp like this?
John R: “John Macready. My favorite Olympian. Coming to work with him everyday.”
John M: “My favorite part is not giving real answers…probably my favorite part is just seeing the amount of people’s lives that the camp changes…to have people come year after year and get the Flip Fest energy. It’s like a confidence, a feeling, it’s a drive—inside the gym but more importantly in life—and to see that come across through people is awesome. And to see it when it’s not led by us is the coolest thing ever…”
John R: “You know, its a gymnastics camp but if you’re around us at all you realize that that’s not the most important thing here—to learn gymnastics. We want the kids and the staff to leave just being empowered, and excited about being a gymnast, but realize they can do anything they want in the world. And on that same level, it’s great to hear about a kid that goes home and was going to quit gymnastics and they came to camp, and they had such a great experience that they just want to keep doing gymnastics. And we hear that off and on throughout the whole summer, and to me, that’s better than some gymnast coming here and learning their giants or learning their double back on floor. That ‘Hey I was going to quit but man, it was such a great experience, I want to keep doing gymnastics so I can at least come back to Flip Fest every summer’…and that’s a pretty cool thing too.”
John M: “We’re in the business of motivating—keeping kids in the sport—everyone knows in gymnastics you can’t learn a ton in a week…it’s just a sport that takes a lifetime. So we always are up front with parents like look, ‘I think your son or daughter is going to learn a ton of gymnastics, but our focus is to light a fire in them that is going to carry them throughout the whole year. And same with the coaches…we don’t want the coaches to think we are competing with them or like ‘we’re way better than your coaches at home.’ No, our job is to be a help to those coaches and so they come home to the coaches and are like ‘man, I am so rejuvenated and ready to do the best sport in the world, and rock out the rest of this year.’ Because that’s where the real work happens.”
John R: “Or ‘you’re right, what you told me everyday for the last year….yeah, they said the same thing…oh, maybe you are smart’”
Q: What challenges do you face running a huge camp like this?
John M: “…There’s a lot of challenges, different departments of challenges. I wouldn’t call it a challenge, but a mission of ours is to keep the same energy from week one all the way through week 12, to make sure that a kid is getting the same experience. You know, everyone is pumped up at the beginning of the summer, but we want to make sure we’re the same at the end of the summer too. So, I guess you could call that a challenge because everyone’s human and you get tired, but we almost make it like the opposite…like ‘no, we are going to bring it, and continue to bring it even harder all the way to the end.’ So I think that’s a challenge, but also like a motto.”
John R: “Yeah, and I think on a gymnastics level, you have a wide range of kids that come in. You’re going to have very beginners that just started gymnastics this year, and you have kids that are high level 10s that want to go on to college. And so to fit them all into the framework of camp is a challenge, because you can’t have completely different training schedules for everybody, so we really try to educate our coaches and try to accommodate the needs of every gymnast regardless of the level they’re coming in. You know, just a beginner is not going to want to train nearly as long as that level 10 that’s coming in. So it’s a balance, and it’s always a moving target, and we try to accommodate the different needs of the different athletes that we have.”
John M: “I think too, is the family aspect of it for us. You know, I have three kids, John has two kids that are younger than ours. But it’s been interesting throughout the years to be able to have a family and have 250 kids that you’re in charge of, and make sure you’re giving your family enough attention. But it’s also helped a lot because it’s a very family environment. You have our kids running around, you have his kids running around…and instead of trying to make it separate we’ve just kind of combined it, and our kids love it. They run around and have a great time, and are pretty much a fixture of camp.”
John R: We do try to make it a family affair, not just for us personally, but we have coaches bringing their whole families, and we want that to happen, as long as we’ve got room…it gets a little crowded sometimes…but we want the coaches and gym owners to come and bring their families with and be a part of camp. We’ve got a lot of kids that have come with their families that aren’t gymnasts…just last week we had one that came..he’s not a gymnast and he was around the gymnasts, hanging out with them, and watching the gym, and decided you know what, ‘I want to do gymnastics now so I can come back to Flip Fest and really be a camper next year.’ So that’s pretty cool too.
How do you pick your guest Olympians and even your coaches? What do you look for?
John M: “John picks most of them. He does a lot of the staffing and the coaching stuff…”
John R: “Well we have a lot of people that want to come. Each week we almost have to turn away, on a week-by-week basis, as many coaches as we actually hire, which is a great problem to have. And a lot of it is word of mouth…we’ll talk to other coaches and and we’ll get recommendations and obviously we try to check their referrals. Once we get a coach in that has that right energy and that right attitude about camp, we like to keep them. And obviously if they are really good, it’s going to be hard to keep them for very long because they’re not going to have summers open… But the gymnastics community is pretty tight knit and you can usually get a pretty good idea of who you’re bringing in and what level they can coach, and that energy they have and that enthusiasm for camp. As far as special guests, it’s a small community to pick from…we pretty much try to have them all in over the course of the summer, and we’ve had a pretty good group—a pretty wide ranging group—as far as domestic Olympians and foreign Olympians. And some special guest are pretty unique, and we want to keep having them back because they don’t just walk in and expect that their ‘celebrity’ is all they gotta bring…they come and they really bring that excitement and that energy. They’re out there coaching the kids and working just as hard as our other coaches, and we certainly gravitate to those Olympians, even if they start to get a little older…like a lot of the kids don’t remember Courtney McCool and Courtney Kupets, but we bring in those types of Olympians anyway because they have just such a great enthusiasm for camp. And by the end of the week, those kids are just loving them.”
Q: What are your future plans or goals for maybe even expanding Flip Fest?
John M: “We’re kind of at that stage where this is where we wanted to get to. We never wanted to get so big that it was over 250/60/70 kids…we never want to lose that personability. And I think when you get over those numbers, it’s very difficult, no matter what your facility is, how many staff you have, it’s just hard… But, we have a lot of land, we own the lake, and so we’re kind of open to anything, but we’re not rushing it. And you know, we might just keep doing this and let our kids deal with that….”
John R: “That’s pretty much it. I think we’re looking for other things to add to it. Gymnastics is a very personal sport, and whether you own a club or own a camp I think it’s the same way. They want to see the owners, they want to see their face and they want to hear from them. And the size it is now, we can really be a part of the camp still, and that’s important to us. And I think anything we do beyond that would be…off in a different direction a little bit and maybe something separate than what we’ve got going here. We’ve got a good thing going and we don’t want to mess it up.”
Q: If you could add one outside activity, anything you wanted, what would you add?
John R: “Catapult, for sure. You give me a catapult and I think I’d start with John Macready… Man, that’s a tough one… We’re totally like safety dads—we’re like ‘Don’t do that! It’s dangerous!’ We’d probably have like ‘power Tiddly winks’ or something…”
John M: “I would say a big zip line…we were going to do a zip line at first at camp and we said, ‘Oh zip lines are the best!’ But the company that built our ropes course said ‘You gotta see the giant swings! Zip lines are cool, but check out the giant swings.’ The giant swings is phenomenal…it’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced. You fly like 60 feet over the lake and it’s a big rush. It’s really cool, but I think it would be really cool to have a zip line from the gym to the ropes course, because the kids do the ropes course as a rotation one time. So, I just think it would be so cool—you leave the gym and get all strapped in and are like ‘zzzzzzzzz’ (*ziplining sound*) So we talked about that and I think that would be really cool.”
John R: “I want the super waterslide, like the one that you start literally at the gym and you just go all the way down the hill…and launch into the lake. I think that would be super fun. I don’t know how realistic that is. Or one of those—have you seen the videos?—it’s not that long but it’s really steep and it’s got the launch at the end…”
John M: “Well what about those big huge balls that you get in and then you go down the hill… and then you do it, like human bowling pins, and you stand down there and they just try to run your over…that would be awesome.”
John R: “I don’t think that’s a good idea…”
John M: “I would like that…”
John R: “That’s a terrible idea..”
John M: “Try it.”
Q: Tell me a little about what you guys do during the year and how you balance it all?
John R: “Well, my stuff is mostly around the gymnastics world. I do a lot of commentating and stuff like that so, it kind of fits with what I already do a little bit… Either I’m traveling to a meet to promote or I’m traveling to a meet to commentate. And it’s cool because it’s a little bitt different side of the sport, but it still puts me around similar people, and it’s good for exposure just to be out there in the forefront at least, with the coaches and some of the gymnasts as well. So that stuff is pretty parallel—it does get challenging obviously with balancing that with family life, but it’s fun and a nice change of pace for me…”
John M: “…A lot of traveling—whether it’s for camp or USA Gymnastics—we both do a lot of stuff for USA Gymnastics. And also the family stuff. And then we both just have little things that you get involved with, like real estate stuff or shows like the tour. In the Olympic year I’m always doing the tour. So it just depends, but we both like to be busy and we like to just do cool things.”
John R: “When you’re busy, you wish you weren’t so busy, and then when you’re not busy, you’re like ‘I need something to do.’”
This busy Flip Fest family will continue to thrive, especially when it's filled with people as passionate about kids and the sport of gymnastics as John and John are. Stay tuned for more Flip Fest coverage!
Related:
Flip Fest Dance-Off
Flip Fest Preview
Q: First just tell me how the idea of Flip Fest came about…
John R: “Well, what I did first was I really thought about this and what my idea was to have a camp. And then I thought you know, I should invite John Macready…” (laughs)
John M: “It’s a really long story I don’t know if you have this much film, but basically, I got into a smaller camp, met my wife, moved away from California. It was kind of a hobby at first, it just kept growing and growing and growing…and I finally decided I was either going to do this and go all the way, or maybe not. So I was going through those thoughts, and I called this guy (John R), and I said ‘Hey man, I’m thinking of taking this to the next level, getting some land, getting the lake, doing the whole thing—do you want in?’ and he said ‘no.’ And then a week later he called back and said ‘yes.’”
John R: “I wasn’t sure what the next level was. He was very vague, he was like ‘the next level’…but yeah we decided to do it and here we are.”
Q: If you had to pick, what is your favorite part about running a camp like this?
John R: “John Macready. My favorite Olympian. Coming to work with him everyday.”
John M: “My favorite part is not giving real answers…probably my favorite part is just seeing the amount of people’s lives that the camp changes…to have people come year after year and get the Flip Fest energy. It’s like a confidence, a feeling, it’s a drive—inside the gym but more importantly in life—and to see that come across through people is awesome. And to see it when it’s not led by us is the coolest thing ever…”
John R: “You know, its a gymnastics camp but if you’re around us at all you realize that that’s not the most important thing here—to learn gymnastics. We want the kids and the staff to leave just being empowered, and excited about being a gymnast, but realize they can do anything they want in the world. And on that same level, it’s great to hear about a kid that goes home and was going to quit gymnastics and they came to camp, and they had such a great experience that they just want to keep doing gymnastics. And we hear that off and on throughout the whole summer, and to me, that’s better than some gymnast coming here and learning their giants or learning their double back on floor. That ‘Hey I was going to quit but man, it was such a great experience, I want to keep doing gymnastics so I can at least come back to Flip Fest every summer’…and that’s a pretty cool thing too.”
John M: “We’re in the business of motivating—keeping kids in the sport—everyone knows in gymnastics you can’t learn a ton in a week…it’s just a sport that takes a lifetime. So we always are up front with parents like look, ‘I think your son or daughter is going to learn a ton of gymnastics, but our focus is to light a fire in them that is going to carry them throughout the whole year. And same with the coaches…we don’t want the coaches to think we are competing with them or like ‘we’re way better than your coaches at home.’ No, our job is to be a help to those coaches and so they come home to the coaches and are like ‘man, I am so rejuvenated and ready to do the best sport in the world, and rock out the rest of this year.’ Because that’s where the real work happens.”
John R: “Or ‘you’re right, what you told me everyday for the last year….yeah, they said the same thing…oh, maybe you are smart’”
Q: What challenges do you face running a huge camp like this?
John M: “…There’s a lot of challenges, different departments of challenges. I wouldn’t call it a challenge, but a mission of ours is to keep the same energy from week one all the way through week 12, to make sure that a kid is getting the same experience. You know, everyone is pumped up at the beginning of the summer, but we want to make sure we’re the same at the end of the summer too. So, I guess you could call that a challenge because everyone’s human and you get tired, but we almost make it like the opposite…like ‘no, we are going to bring it, and continue to bring it even harder all the way to the end.’ So I think that’s a challenge, but also like a motto.”
John R: “Yeah, and I think on a gymnastics level, you have a wide range of kids that come in. You’re going to have very beginners that just started gymnastics this year, and you have kids that are high level 10s that want to go on to college. And so to fit them all into the framework of camp is a challenge, because you can’t have completely different training schedules for everybody, so we really try to educate our coaches and try to accommodate the needs of every gymnast regardless of the level they’re coming in. You know, just a beginner is not going to want to train nearly as long as that level 10 that’s coming in. So it’s a balance, and it’s always a moving target, and we try to accommodate the different needs of the different athletes that we have.”
John M: “I think too, is the family aspect of it for us. You know, I have three kids, John has two kids that are younger than ours. But it’s been interesting throughout the years to be able to have a family and have 250 kids that you’re in charge of, and make sure you’re giving your family enough attention. But it’s also helped a lot because it’s a very family environment. You have our kids running around, you have his kids running around…and instead of trying to make it separate we’ve just kind of combined it, and our kids love it. They run around and have a great time, and are pretty much a fixture of camp.”
John R: We do try to make it a family affair, not just for us personally, but we have coaches bringing their whole families, and we want that to happen, as long as we’ve got room…it gets a little crowded sometimes…but we want the coaches and gym owners to come and bring their families with and be a part of camp. We’ve got a lot of kids that have come with their families that aren’t gymnasts…just last week we had one that came..he’s not a gymnast and he was around the gymnasts, hanging out with them, and watching the gym, and decided you know what, ‘I want to do gymnastics now so I can come back to Flip Fest and really be a camper next year.’ So that’s pretty cool too.
How do you pick your guest Olympians and even your coaches? What do you look for?
John M: “John picks most of them. He does a lot of the staffing and the coaching stuff…”
John R: “Well we have a lot of people that want to come. Each week we almost have to turn away, on a week-by-week basis, as many coaches as we actually hire, which is a great problem to have. And a lot of it is word of mouth…we’ll talk to other coaches and and we’ll get recommendations and obviously we try to check their referrals. Once we get a coach in that has that right energy and that right attitude about camp, we like to keep them. And obviously if they are really good, it’s going to be hard to keep them for very long because they’re not going to have summers open… But the gymnastics community is pretty tight knit and you can usually get a pretty good idea of who you’re bringing in and what level they can coach, and that energy they have and that enthusiasm for camp. As far as special guests, it’s a small community to pick from…we pretty much try to have them all in over the course of the summer, and we’ve had a pretty good group—a pretty wide ranging group—as far as domestic Olympians and foreign Olympians. And some special guest are pretty unique, and we want to keep having them back because they don’t just walk in and expect that their ‘celebrity’ is all they gotta bring…they come and they really bring that excitement and that energy. They’re out there coaching the kids and working just as hard as our other coaches, and we certainly gravitate to those Olympians, even if they start to get a little older…like a lot of the kids don’t remember Courtney McCool and Courtney Kupets, but we bring in those types of Olympians anyway because they have just such a great enthusiasm for camp. And by the end of the week, those kids are just loving them.”
Q: What are your future plans or goals for maybe even expanding Flip Fest?
John M: “We’re kind of at that stage where this is where we wanted to get to. We never wanted to get so big that it was over 250/60/70 kids…we never want to lose that personability. And I think when you get over those numbers, it’s very difficult, no matter what your facility is, how many staff you have, it’s just hard… But, we have a lot of land, we own the lake, and so we’re kind of open to anything, but we’re not rushing it. And you know, we might just keep doing this and let our kids deal with that….”
John R: “That’s pretty much it. I think we’re looking for other things to add to it. Gymnastics is a very personal sport, and whether you own a club or own a camp I think it’s the same way. They want to see the owners, they want to see their face and they want to hear from them. And the size it is now, we can really be a part of the camp still, and that’s important to us. And I think anything we do beyond that would be…off in a different direction a little bit and maybe something separate than what we’ve got going here. We’ve got a good thing going and we don’t want to mess it up.”
Q: If you could add one outside activity, anything you wanted, what would you add?
John R: “Catapult, for sure. You give me a catapult and I think I’d start with John Macready… Man, that’s a tough one… We’re totally like safety dads—we’re like ‘Don’t do that! It’s dangerous!’ We’d probably have like ‘power Tiddly winks’ or something…”
John M: “I would say a big zip line…we were going to do a zip line at first at camp and we said, ‘Oh zip lines are the best!’ But the company that built our ropes course said ‘You gotta see the giant swings! Zip lines are cool, but check out the giant swings.’ The giant swings is phenomenal…it’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced. You fly like 60 feet over the lake and it’s a big rush. It’s really cool, but I think it would be really cool to have a zip line from the gym to the ropes course, because the kids do the ropes course as a rotation one time. So, I just think it would be so cool—you leave the gym and get all strapped in and are like ‘zzzzzzzzz’ (*ziplining sound*) So we talked about that and I think that would be really cool.”
John R: “I want the super waterslide, like the one that you start literally at the gym and you just go all the way down the hill…and launch into the lake. I think that would be super fun. I don’t know how realistic that is. Or one of those—have you seen the videos?—it’s not that long but it’s really steep and it’s got the launch at the end…”
John M: “Well what about those big huge balls that you get in and then you go down the hill… and then you do it, like human bowling pins, and you stand down there and they just try to run your over…that would be awesome.”
John R: “I don’t think that’s a good idea…”
John M: “I would like that…”
John R: “That’s a terrible idea..”
John M: “Try it.”
Q: Tell me a little about what you guys do during the year and how you balance it all?
John R: “Well, my stuff is mostly around the gymnastics world. I do a lot of commentating and stuff like that so, it kind of fits with what I already do a little bit… Either I’m traveling to a meet to promote or I’m traveling to a meet to commentate. And it’s cool because it’s a little bitt different side of the sport, but it still puts me around similar people, and it’s good for exposure just to be out there in the forefront at least, with the coaches and some of the gymnasts as well. So that stuff is pretty parallel—it does get challenging obviously with balancing that with family life, but it’s fun and a nice change of pace for me…”
John M: “…A lot of traveling—whether it’s for camp or USA Gymnastics—we both do a lot of stuff for USA Gymnastics. And also the family stuff. And then we both just have little things that you get involved with, like real estate stuff or shows like the tour. In the Olympic year I’m always doing the tour. So it just depends, but we both like to be busy and we like to just do cool things.”
John R: “When you’re busy, you wish you weren’t so busy, and then when you’re not busy, you’re like ‘I need something to do.’”
This busy Flip Fest family will continue to thrive, especially when it's filled with people as passionate about kids and the sport of gymnastics as John and John are. Stay tuned for more Flip Fest coverage!
Related:
Flip Fest Dance-Off
Flip Fest Preview