Off Fairview Avenue in St. Paul, a new gymnastics facility has a bit of everything. One side of the gym has high-level training for the University of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics Club, and on the left of the gym are mini pads and toy tunnels. The facility is a new home for the club.

The facility — which the Friends of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics helped open — is known as Foundation Gymnastics and is at 655 Fairview Ave.

Gymnast Owen Frank performs on the pommel horse as longtime assistant coach Bob Wuornos watches during practice at the new home of the University of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics Club in the Fairview Business Center in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

There are three dedicated spaces — a preschool area, a space for the University of Minnesota men’s team training, and a section for the uneven bars and the high jump. The facility is open to all levels of gymnastics, with recreational practices and children.

Mike Burns, the head coach for the club, said they looked at a few buildings in Northeast Minneapolis and places near the U but chose the building in St. Paul because it met the 20-foot ceiling height requirements for equipment such as the rings.

Burns said the new building is helpful because it is near the university, and the mix of gymnasts at different levels is a good way to motivate everyone.

“We have a high-level men’s gymnastics team training in the same space that these little kids will be doing their gymnastics. They’ll have some upper-level gymnastics that they can kind of be exposed to and watch while they’re doing their stuff and give them a chance to think, ‘Oh I could maybe do that someday,’” Burns said.

University of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics Club head coach Mike Burns uses a heavily padded crutch to help gymnast Ben Letvin maintain his posture on the rings during practice in the club’s new facility in the Fairview Business Center in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Series of changes for team

The men’s gymnastics club has gone through a series of changes that started in 2020. Men’s gymnastics was removed from Division I status that year by the university’s Board of Regents. According to Burns, the team moved from Division I to club status and continued under the campus life program.

When the team became a club, they received funding from the Friends of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics, a nonprofit.

After the team’s Division I status was removed, Burns said, there were immediate effects in participation, but the club was slowly able to increase team members, from seven in 2020 to 26 this year.

“It impacted it initially, but I think it’s kind of a great destination for gymnasts that want to continue to do gymnastics at the college level, at a very high-level institution. So I think we’re pretty attractive for guys that aren’t able to get onto an NCAA team. We have a great option for them here,” Burns said.

With a wall of championship banners as a backdrop, gymnast Luke Pedersen performs on the parallel bars during practice at the new home of the University of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics Club in the Fairview Business Center in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Looking for a new home

​Burns said the team was asked to leave their original space in Cooke Hall in 2024, after the U decided to renovate the building for the diving team, the kinesiology program and RecWell activities. The same year the team was asked to move out, they won second place at GymACT nationals.

For Ben Letvin, a junior with the club, the loss of Cooke Hall was almost like losing a home.

“Cooke Hall was kind of like a safe haven for men’s gymnastics at the University of Minnesota. It was a historic place,” Letvin said. “I mean, the men’s gymnastics team had been practicing there for about a hundred years before the university changed the use of the space. So, it was kind of just a shock.”

After that, the team moved around to different training facilities in areas like Mini Hops in Plymouth, North Shore Gymnastics in Maple Plain, and Twin Cities Twisters in Champlin.

​For junior Jack Gagamov, president of the gymnastics team, moving around was a struggle at first. People had to meet at different times during the week.

Gagamov said he’s excited for the team to have its own facility again, to build culture.​

“It’s a team sport. So being able to bounce off of each other’s energy is really important to be able to hit routines. I think understanding who you’re competing for every day in the gym makes a really big impact on the outcome of your routines,” Gagamov said.

Gymnast K. J. Richardson, right, shakes hands with head coach Mike Burns after his high bar routine during practice at the new home of the University of Minnesota Men’s Gymnastics Club in the Fairview Business Center in the Midway neighborhood in St. Paul on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

A sense of community

Andrew Winslow, a freshman athlete on the team, said the new facility helps build a sense of community with the mix of recreational and professional levels.

“I think it’s a great opportunity, honestly. We still get to keep that long-lasting history of being the Minnesota Men’s College of gymnastics,” Winslow said. “Having this facility double for rec classes and other purposes such as private lessons or one-on-one coaching, even in the future of making a junior men’s club gymnastics team that will go out and compete just like we do, but at the junior Olympic level, I think it’s all really exciting.”

Micah Winder, a freshman with the team, said the location was convenient, especially for students.

“I like how close it is to my apartment and how close it is to campus. It’s a lot of time and gas saved,” Winder said.

The facility opened for the team in late October and is now open for recreational lessons.

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As Burns balances classes with younger kids; he and other gymnasts are preparing for their Maroon and Gold intrasquad set, a way for the team to test itself before major competitions.

The team also will have home competitions in early January and February at Shakopee High School and Humboldt High School, respectively. The MN GymAct Invitational also will take place at Humboldt High School on Feb. 14.

For more information on the Foundation Gymnastics facility, go to foundationgym.org.

While there really aren’t any Christmas constellations in the sky any time of the year, there’s a wonderful sign of the season waiting for you in the early evening eastern sky right now.

It’s a bit of a challenge to find but not too difficult. It’s the Christmas Tree Cluster you can see with just a small telescope or even a decent pair of binoculars, and it really looks like a Christmas tree. It’s easier to see in the dark countryside, but even in light-polluted areas you should be able to spot it. Formally, in the astronomical books, it’s known as New General Catalog Object 2264, or NGC 2264 for short. It’s so cute, and hopefully it will add to your holiday spirit.

After 7:30 or so it will be high enough above the eastern horizon to start your search. The Christmas Tree Cluster resides in a very obscure constellation called Monoceros the Unicorn, which looks more to me like a ham radio tower my Dad set up on top of the house I grew up in, much to my Mom’s objections. Forget about trying to truly see Monoceros. You don’t need to and it’s so faint, anyway. The best way to find the little Christmas tree is to use the bright constellation Orion the Hunter, perched diagonally in the southeastern sky. I know you’ve seen it before. It’s the dominant constellation of winter, containing the three bright stars in a nearly perfect row that make up the belt of the mighty hunter.

(Mike Lynch)

On the upper left corner of Orion is a bright reddish-tinged star called Betelgeuse that marks the armpit of the hunter. On the upper right corner of Orion is the star Bellatrix, not quite as bright as Betelgeuse. Draw a line from Bellatrix to Betelgeuse and continue that line to the lower left about 10 degrees from Betelgeuse. Ten degrees is about the width of your fist at arm’s length. Scan that area with your binoculars or telescope and you should eventually find it. Once you do, you’ll see the cluster of 20 or so stars arranged in the shape of a Christmas tree.

What’s odd, though, is that the brightest star is at the base of the tree, not at the top where you would expect it. The starry little tree will appear to point to the lower right in binoculars and some telescopes. However, most telescopes will give you an inverted view so the miniature tree will point to the upper left.

The Christmas tree shape of the cluster is arguably a pleasant coincidence. The stars just happen to be arranged that way from our view of them on Earth. Like most open clusters, this is a group of young stars that formed out of a large nebula of hydrogen gas, much like our sun did over 5 billion years ago. These clusters of young stars hang out together for several hundred million years until gravity from other surrounding stars breaks them up. My attached photo of the Christmas Tree Cluster was taken with one of the high-definition astronomical cameras and captured not only the cluster but also the nebulae around it. With binoculars or a small telescope, you won’t see the nebulosity, but you should easily see the stars that make up the tree.

The Christmas Tree Cluster (Mike Lynch)

The stars that light up the Christmas Tree cluster send their tidings of great joy from a long, long way away. They’re about 2,600 light-years distant, with just one light-year equaling nearly 6 trillion miles. Since a light-year is defined as the distance that light travels in one year, the lights we see from this Christmas tree tonight left those stars in about 600 B.C. They’ve been waiting a long time for you to see them!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and adventurepublications.net. Mike is available for private star parties. You can contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.

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After Richfield police received numerous 911 calls Saturday morning that a man was “dragging a dead body” out of an apartment and loading it into a vehicle, police gave chase until the man pulled over at an Edina hospital’s emergency room entrance.

An unconscious 23-year-old woman was in the back seat with a gunshot wound. Despite lifesaving efforts, she was pronounced dead.

The Richfield Police Department gave the following details about the incident on its Facebook page:

At about 3:12 a.m. Saturday, officers responded to 911 calls from residents at 7601 Knox Avenue South saying a man had loaded what looked like a dead body into a vehicle.

An officer in the area tried to pull the man’s vehicle over but the driver didn’t stop and there was a brief chase until the man stopped at the emergency entrance at M Health Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina, where the woman was discovered in the back seat.

The man was taken into custody.

No further details were available. The incident remains under active investigation.

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Taking advantage of the subzero temperatures, volunteers flooded the Groveland Ice Rinks at St. Clair and Prior avenues in St. Paul on Saturday.

The volunteers, along with the nonprofit organization that manages the ice, will create two hockey rinks, a general skating rink, a pond hockey ring and a long and short skating oval. The Groveland Ice Rinks also feature a warming house and skate rentals.

Volunteers flood the Groveland Ice Skating Rinks to prepare two hockey rinks, a general skating rink, a pond hockey rink and long and short skating ovals. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

While Saturday’s high temperature in the Twin Cities reached just 3 above zero, a rapid warm-up is expected after the weekend. Tuesday could see a high of 40.

For more information on the skating season, go to grovelandicerinks.org.

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