By Charles Holt
Kansas City Business Journal

June 1995

After 20 years of coaching budding gymnasts, Kansas City entrepreneur Al Fong feels he knows what makes kids tick.

"Kids love to run, jump, climb, slide and generally just go nuts without getting hurt or getting in trouble," the 42-year-old Fong said. "This is the place."

"The place" is the latest and largest of three Great American Gymnastic Express training and sports-fun centers that Fong, co-founder of the Discovery Zone indoor playgrounds and world-class coach, has opened in the Kansas City area.

GAGE-Overland Park at 9063 Bond opened in mid-May. Three Olympic gymnasts, Kim Zemeskal and Betty Okino of the United States and former Russian World Champion Svetlana Bouguinskaia, attended the event. Fong has coached many world-class gymnasts, including Christy Henrich, a top-flight gymnast from Blue Springs who died last summer of anorexia.

The Discovery Zones were for kids 12 and under, Fong said, while GAGE is geared toward all ages.

"Now we have something for everyone," he said.

Fong and partner Ron Matsch sold the Discovery Zone franchise in 1992 to Chicago-based Flynn Enterprises. Fong would not talk about the terms of the deal. But when he still owned them, each franchise reportedly sold for $435,000.

Formerly the home of the Discovery Zone warehouse/research and development center, and recently deemed a distressed building by city officials, GAGE-Overland Park required a $300,000 face-lift before opening for business.

The facility now boasts $200,000 in Olympic-caliber equipment, giant foam pits, in-ground trampolines and its newest attraction, "Bump City," which emulates the made-for-TV pseudo-sport American Gladiators.

"And don't forget the wall," said 10-year-old Jenny Davidson of Overland Park.

"The wall" -- officially called Monster Mountain -- is a 45-foot high, 5000-square-foot purple fiberglass edifice with rocks attached to it. Daring souls climb while harnessed in one of 15 available belay repelling stations.

Because GAGE-Overland Park is not on a heavily traveled road, Andy Triliak of Gregg Advertising said, his company's marketing strategy for GAGE has hinged on direct mail, the highly publicized grand opening and two television commercials set to begin airing this week.

Built on what Fong described as a "shoestring budget of $350,000," the 12,500-square-foot GAGE-Blue Springs features, among other items, two dance floors and a ropes obstacle course that participants brave while suspended 20 feet in the air.

Fong also owns a converted pull-barn in Blue Springs, used as an Olympic caliber training facility for his elite squad of competitive gymnasts.

GAGE's enrollment for the gymnastic classes usually runs about 1,000, said Jill McDonald, a facility coordinator who has 20 years of experience with the sport in the Kansas City area. "It swells during the Summer Olympics, of course. But other than that, it has remained pretty consistent."

Road to success

Three months before graduating in 1975 from Louisiana State University, where he trained under two-time Olympian and three-time world champion Armando Vega, Fong got an offer to run a gymnastics program for the Ichiban Sports Center in Rogersville, Ark.

"I really didn't know what I was going to do after graduation," Fong said.

Fong decided to take the gymnastics job because it included the chance to coach two Amateur Athletic Union teams competing on a national level.

Then about two years later, Fong visited a friend in Kansas City. He decided to stay and began coaching for his buddy's gymnastics club in Lee's Summit. Later, the pair had a falling out, and Fong had suddenly become a nomadic coach with about 150 kids in-tow.

One parent, Tom Reese, offered some business advice to the young coach.

"Tom told me, 'Look at it like this. You want the American dream -- the house, the car. . . . But you're never going to have it on a coach's salary,'" Fong said. "That just made something in my head click. I finally quit thinking with the coach's mentality that in order to win, everything must be sacrificed."

In 1979, Reese and a colleague, Dick Boris, chipped in $2,500 each, and helped Fong secure a $15,000 Small Business Administration loan that he used to rent a small building in Blue Springs and to furnish it with a minimal amount of equipment. Thus was born The Great American Gymnastics Express.

A fortunate discovery

While on holiday in Texas in the late 1980s, Fong stumbled upon a crude gymnasium filled with outdoor playground equipment.

On the way back to Kansas City, Fong envisioned a market for an essentially self-service sports fun-center that would require little overhead, minimal staffing and the potential for huge profits.

Fong ran his idea by his friend, Ron Matsch, whom Fong said was equally "mesmerized."

The two then mapped out a plan, designed their own equipment and gathered some investors. With $250,000, they bought an 8,000-square-foot facility in Lenexa and opened the first Discovery Zone indoor playground.

These days, Blockbuster Entertainment owns most of the nearly 300 Discovery Zones across the country. The company reported revenues from the playgrounds of $38.3 million in the second quarter of 1994.

The best thing about the deal was that it gave Fong more freedom to coach his team kids, he said. "It's kind of like when you're on the airplane and they tell you to take care of yourself first, and then your child if the oxygen masks come down."

Uneasy validation

Fong met Christy Henrich in 1980 when she enrolled at GAGE-Blue Springs at age 8. She quickly became a member of the Dragons, Fong's elite squad of competitive gymnasts.

In 1988, 16-year-old Henrich stood 4 feet 10 and weighed 90 pounds when a U.S. judge, at a meet in Budapest, remarked that she would need to lose weight to make the Olympic team.

Henrich's family, coaches and friends felt that the judge's comment triggered her long struggle with anorexia, an eating disorder. She lost that fight on July 26, 1994, at age 22. When she died, she weighed 61 pounds.

The Dragons' fierce level of training – up to seven hours a day -- combined with Fong's obsession with training champions -- 10 Dragons have made the U.S. national team in recent years -- may have contributed to Henrich's death, some said. He staunchly denies it.

"It hurts at first, especially when you're not used to dealing with the press," Fong said, recalling the deluge of international media that descended upon him following Henrich's death.

"CNN, the BBC, The New York Times, they were all beating down my door," he said. "But they were all painting the wrong picture. I wanted to scream, 'I'm innocent, I'm the one who discovered it (her anorexia) and tried to stop it.' I never weighed her one day in her life."

Fong said that ultimately the negative press didn't hurt his business, but "validated" him as a world-class coach.

"People seem to remember only that they saw me on TV," Fong said.

Always the patriot

A second generation Chinese-American who was born and raised in Seattle, Fong is extremely patriotic, hence the Great American portion of the gymnastics club's name.

"I feel lucky just to be here," Fong said, while telling how his father had been born in New York but taken back to China at age 3. He then returned to Seattle as an adult.

Fong also has a strong sense of community. GAGE regularly works with the Special Olympics, the DARE drug prevention program, Sherwood Special Education and the Blue Springs school district.

He hopes to open a GAGE-type facility in the inner city soon to give disadvantaged youth exposure to gymnastics.

"I'm just so proud of Kansas City and our country," Fong said, "especially when one of my kids represents us."