Starting next school year, girl’s gymnastics will no longer be an interscholastic sport in Montgomery County, Maryland. However, one coach is fighting back to keep the sport alive for high school gymnasts.
Starting next school year, girls’ gymnastics will no longer be an interscholastic sport in Montgomery County, Maryland. However, one coach is fighting back to keep the sport alive for high school gymnasts.
Paula Shaibani, a gymnastics instructor at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and the sport’s director for Montgomery County Public Schools, launched an online petition after the school system’s athletic department elected to end the program. It has already collected over 1,300 signatures as of Friday.
“There is a larger community that does care about gymnastics and does want to see justice be served and these girls to be done right by,” Shaibani told WTOP.
Many of her gymnasts expressed disappointment and shock about the decision, Shaibani said.
“There’s a lot of upset kids right now, especially since they feel like they never really had a chance or a fair shot,” she said. “Gymnastics grew 27% from 2024 to 2025 within MCPS, so we thought we were on the right track. We thought we were showing growth as much as they let us.”
Montgomery County is the last jurisdiction in Maryland to offer gymnastics as an interscholastic sport in seven high schools. Shaibani, who helps oversee the sport for the county, said the format is similar to college gymnastics, including uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise events.
Internal data obtained by WTOP shows that 126 athletes, averaging 18 per team, participated in gymnastics last season before the postseason.
According to Shaibani, coaches were told of the possibility of the program being cut during a postseason meeting last May. Athletic Director Jeffery Sullivan told the coaches that there would be some developments before a decision was made including “community forums” with parents, gymnasts and coaches, Shaibani added.
However, the town-hall style events never came to fruition.
“I’m disappointed in how the county has chosen to handle this,” Shaibani said. “If they wanted to cancel it, they could have done it the right way.”
MCPS athletics ‘blindside’ gymnastics teams
Reports emerged in early February of the school system’s decision.
In a letter obtained by WTOP, Sullivan said, “Ongoing challenges with facilities, equipment, and staffing have made it difficult to sustain the program.” Funding for gymnastics will be moved to pilot STUNT, a new sport derived from traditional cheerleading into a competitive format, at 13 schools.
“We know that the discontinuation of gymnastics and co-ed volleyball will be difficult for some members of our community. However, the innovation of the program will provide significantly more participation opportunities and align with anticipated middle school enhancements,” Sullivan said.
“We got blindsided,” Shaibani said.
Shaibani fired back by starting the petition to show how much support there is for the sport in Montgomery County. She made a hoodie with the petition’s URL to get the messaging out while she is out working as a coach and physical trainer around the D.C. region.
She, along with some parents, spoke in front of members of the Montgomery County Board of Education during its Feb. 19 meeting. Afterward, she wrote board members an email and received a response from the schools’ ombudsman, Darlene M. Harris.
“I’m grateful that the board sent me back a response that makes it sound like they read everything I had to say and that they were on it,” Shaibani said.
However, because its unclear how it will proceed going forward, “I wish I had something more real to hold out hope for,” she added.
During the Feb. 19 meeting, multiple school board members called for an explanation for how sports programs are discounted and asked for athletics officials to attend the next meeting on March 26.
Board member Julie Yang said while she understood that the decision rests with MCPS, she wanted to know more about the decision, including enrollment data and pain points the sport has been facing.
“I think gymnastics is a pretty popular program,” Board member Grace Rivera-Oven said. “I hear the pain in the parents’ voices and the kids’. I just honestly don’t really have an understanding of it.”
In the meantime, Shaibani said she will balance advocating for the sports continuation in Montgomery County while coaching her team this spring. While she hopes her gymnasts can outdo their undefeated 2025 regular season and win the county championship, a bigger win would be gymnastics continuing altogether after 2026.
“The more that the petition grows, the more that the county can see that, yes, even though there is this group of selfish individuals in power, there is a larger community that does care about gymnastics and does want to see justice be served and these girls to be done right by,” Shaibani said.
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