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Crowds flip for Tumbling for Success

By Joseph White / Photos by Joseph White on Monday, August 24, 2009

Address: 4427 W Thomas, Chicago, IL 60651

Walk into the Shedd Park Fieldhouse any weekday afternoon and you’re sure to see something that will stop you cold: young people flying through the air all over the gymnasium. They are doing back flips and aerials and handsprings and other awe-inspiring feats of athleticism. Is it a Ninja training facility? A zero-gravity club? No, it’s Tumbling for Success, a gymnastics-based sports program for youths between ages 3 and 18. And these kids really know how to make a jaw drop.

“I call it Urban Mobile Gymnastics,” said Tumbling for Success, Inc. President/CEO Perry D. Browley, who is also the program’s founder. “We teach inner city kids the physics of tumbling, how to roll and how to know where they are without using their eyes.”

It’s hard to imagine anyone leaving a Tumbling for Success show unimpressed. These young Chicagoans are nothing if not disciplined and well-trained, making double back flips and vaulted aerials look remarkably easy. According to 15-year-old Eugene Shankalin, when it comes to tumbling, the only thing to fear is fear itself.

“Trying to develop two flips in the air seems scary, but if you don’t think about it, it’s not scary at all,” Eugene said.

While some adults might find it frightening that children as young as nine years old are doing aerials off a trampoline, Tumbling for Success always puts safety first. “Of course we have to worry about injury,” head coach Cortez Cosey said. “But we have proper equipment like crash mats and landing pads, and we teach them techniques to stay safe, like rolling after the trick if the landing doesn’t go right.”

The emphasis on safety comes from Browley himself, who got his start in the discipline as a member of the Jesse White Tumbling Team. “When I was tumbling with Jesse,” he said, “we used to travel throughout the Midwest. We had to learn through trial and error. I want these kids to have teachers so they can have that same opportunity, but with more direction.”

Over the years, Browley has maintained his relationship with White, now the Illinois Secretary of State, and his team. “Jesse’s kids come to our practices and performances all the time to see what we are doing different,” Browley said.

After launching Tumbling for Success in 1999, Browley quickly discovered the easiest way to recruit students. “New kids come in and watch for a couple of minutes, and before you know it they want to sign up,” he said.

That was exactly how Eugene decided to join the team. “I saw someone do a backflip, and I wanted to know how to do one,” he said. “I was motivated immediately.”

Sky Shields, 12, has been with the program for two years. She enjoys the camaraderie of the Tumbling for Success experience, but admits there is a good-natured rivalry to be the team’s best. “Everybody on the team, we’re all friends and we don’t really argue,” she said. “But deep down we are also very competitive.”

Browley recognizes the competitive nature of his athletes and tries to channel it towards something constructive. “The competition among the kids is healthy,” Browley said. “It inspires them and motivates them to learn more. Once you are motivated, you learn and have the chance to excel.”

Tumbling for Success currently hosts 75 students from all over the Chicago area, with four school sites and various practice facilities throughout the park district. With the program now in its tenth year, Browley couldn’t be more pleased.

“The team performs at different schools, block parties, political events and parades,” Browley said. “When people see these kids in action, man, the looks on their faces.”

On Friday, July 31st, the Tumbling for Success performance team did a show at the1900 block of North St. Louis in Logan Square, as part of the B-Ball on the Block event sponsored by Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation. One of three major performing events, Tumbling for Success stole the show, especially when the kids began vaulting and flipping over an Econoline van.

The performance served as validation of the hard work that the Tumbling for Success kids have put in, as the adulation of the crowd mirrored what they felt before joining the group, when they were just young people wishing they could perform the gravity-defying feats they had witnessed. Said team member Pakara Bell, 16: “The program taught me that you do whatever you need to do to get to your goal.”

The smile on her face also revealed something else – that these kids get a lot of enjoyment from tumbling. If you were vaulting off a trampoline and doing double front flips ten feet high in the air in front of a cheering throng, wouldn’t you be having fun too?

“We use tumbling to touch lives,” Browley said. “It helps these kids adapt to society. When they first start here, a lot of them think their community, their neighborhood is the whole world. Tumbling opened up a new world for me when I started, and hopefully Tumbling for Success will continue opening up new worlds for them.”