Breasha Pruitt

As a former gymnast, Breasha Pruitt knows a thing or two about flips. She flipped the script on her own experiences to provide a nurturing environment for athletes at Breasha Pruitt Elite Gymnastics in Evansville, Indiana. And when another team needed a coach, Breasha vaulted to a perfect score in kindness, class and empathy. Just two weeks before a major state competition in March, the coach at a nearby gym was injured and unable to coach or make the meet. So, in addition to 15 of her own athletes, Breasha stepped up to coach nine of her rivals.

“I agreed to take on anyone that needed a place, because I remember my own coach being unable to go to elite nationals,” Breasha says. “So, I looked past the girls as rivals. It was more a case of just helping someone in need.”

For two weeks, the athletes trained together, then competed for their respective gyms, all under Breasha’s guidance. They seemed to bring out the best in each other. Among the girls from Breasha’s gym was a state champion and two who finished second in their divisions. All nine girls she “adopted” improved on their scores from the year before.

”Both groups did amazing,” Breasha says, “I was happy for them.” But perhaps most gratifying was that her original athletes “were welcoming and took the girls in as part of our team. They trusted me enough that it would work out.”

Breasha appreciates the joy of gymnastics and wants to pass it on. She was USA Gymnastics’ Indiana and Regional all-around champion and a Junior Olympic national champion on uneven bars. A two-time elite national team member, she represented the U.S in France and Australia.

But her path was pockmarked with adversity. She left her home, school and family in Kentucky as a 6th grader to train hundreds of miles away. Living with a series of host families, she was home-schooled and trained up to 8 hours a day. Coaches could be unfair and cruel: berating her, using racial slurs and harshly punishing small mistakes and tardiness. She later earned multiple college scholarships but returned home after a year at the University of Georgia because of injury.

Any one of these obstacles would have been enough to turn her back on the sport. Instead, she says, “I wanted to be the change. You can’t be the change if you don’t stand up for it. We need coaches that want to do things the right way, not the old way.”

So, she set up her own gym, the first Black-owned gym in Indiana, based on her personal pillars of positivity, family, kindness and fun. “I wanted my girls and boys team to be able to stay at home to get the coaching they deserve,” she says.

Others have noticed. Two years ago, the Positive Coaching Alliance named her Double-Goal National Coach of the Year. She received the Kentucky Colonel Award from Governor Andy Beshear and served as 2023 commencement speaker at the University of Southern Indiana College of Science, Engineering, and Education. The most recent and personal honor came after the state competition, when all the girls Breasha coached at the state meet decided to stay with her.

“The goals were to help them get to State and to keep up their skills,” she says. “It was never for them to stay with me, but I’m glad we’ll all be wearing the same uniform this year.”