Chelsea Piers Girls Gymnastics Team

Chris McClain /// Head Coach

My advice to any gymnast (or anyone) would be that you should find out what you are capable of being and then strive for it, become it. Chris McClain

Christina “Chris” McClain competed gymnastics for eight years. Her love of gymnastics continued to deepen and Chris began coaching at Wings Gymnastics while still competing in the sport. Chris followed this by working for almost ten years at Cincinnati Gymnastics Academy. She then moved to the Big Apple in 2001 to work at Chelsea Piers under Peter Kormann, a good friend of her former employer, Mary Lee Tracy.




Would you share with us your reasons for staying with gymnastics?
I continue to coach gymnastics because it is the only sport that encompasses so many amazing and different aspects of an athlete’s personality. A gymnast must be artistic in her movements and expression is vital. She must be disciplined and have total control over her body in a way that most people can never even imagine.

What do you enjoy in your day-to-day coaching?
I like the process of figuring out what the athlete wants to achieve and finding a path to get to that end result.

What makes you happy when working with your athletes?
What makes me the absolute happiest when I’m working with a gymnast is when I take a step back and see that she is figuring it out on her own, that she understands what it takes to reach a certain goal. Then I know she is actually learning what she needs to know.

It doesn’t happen often, but it is very exciting when both the athlete and myself are completely satisfied with the gymnastics she has done in either a workout or at a competition. I cherish these shared moments.

Chris graduated from the University of Ohio where she studied and majored in Literature and Theater with an area of concentration in dance. However, if you ask Chris, she will tell you that she learned the most from observing the people around her every single day.