My family loves Sapphire. Both of my kids have been going there for years. My daughter has been…read morethere preschool through 3rd grade and my son has been there 3rd through 5th grade. They have been in basketball and climbing and swimming and soccer and track and almost every other kid sport, and gymnastics at Sapphire is by far their favorite. Whenever there is a conflict ("you have to choose between gymnastics and...") they ALWAYS choose Sapphire.
Every single week, I watch my kids during their lessons, and every single week, they are BEAMING. I see huge smiles for the new thing they can do, and I also see huge smiles for the random fun stuff they do every week. My son and daughter are very different and I find it surprising that they have the same favorite sport. I think it is because the coaches do a great job of figuring out what each kid likes about the sport and making sure they get to do it.
My kids have had many different instructors, ranging from good to great. No bad ones. If I had to highlight the really outstanding instructors, I would name Simon and Jenny. But there have been no bad teachers, nor even any mediocre ones.
Gymnastics is purely recreation for my kids. They definitely love learning new skills and advancing to the higher class levels, but they are not wanting to go to competitions or anything. It looks like me like that advanced stuff is going on in other parts of the gym while we're there, but I've never felt any pressure to push the kids harder or "get serious" or anything like that. It seems to me that the really serious gymnasts and the recreational ones coexist very nicely.
Their class registration system used to be very annoying a few years ago. I hated it. They threw it out and set up a whole new system. Now it's fantastic. It's easy to find out when the next registration period is, easy to see what classes are available, and easy to get registered. Communication is excellent. I get registration confirmations, great advance notification of when they're open and closed, etc.
My only complaints are very minor. I am always jealous watching my kids have fun in the gym, and I wish they would have some kind of event where parents and kids can do gymnastics together. Also, I wish there were more seats with a good view of the whole gym. A dozen parents come in and plop down in the good seats and stare at their phones for an hour, and this leaves no good seats for the parents who are watching. Finally, the entrance to the parking lot is steep, and it's tough when there is ice.
Another nice little touch is that they give out little award coins when students are helping other students work on a skill. The coins say "I caught you being good" or something like that. Over the past few years, my daughter has earned five of these. She gets INCREDIBLY excited every time. She has the coins all together, and for each one, she can tell you exactly what she was doing the night she earned it. It is such an awesome moment when she comes out of practice jumping up and down showing me that she earned another one.
I could say a million nice things about Sapphire (and this review did get pretty long) but really the only one that matters to me is those smiles. Year after year, this is the sport that my kids love the most. They have crazy fun every single week.
