Meet Michele Gomez of FullOut Xtreme Cheer

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michele Gomez.

Michele, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
“We are always looking for coaches!” That was the calling that started it all! I started volunteering for my daughter’s sideline cheerleading team because yes, I’m that mom. I did have a small stint with cheerleading in school and loved every minute of the experience. Without a coaching clue, I dove in head first and quickly realized I loved this part of cheerleading as well. I did this for as many years as my daughters continued in youth cheer and after developing a group of girls that moved with me throughout the years, I decided to take my coaching to the All Star competitive world. I did take a break to be a mom to my youngest daughter as she went through her high school cheerleading years. At the time, I worked at a high school and one morning at the start of my summer vacation, I received the phone call that would jumpstart my dream. A good friend called me with an opportunity to start my own team. All my own. Although I had absolutely nothing, I decided that I had to take the chance. I did not want to look back at that moment 3 to 5 years later and ask myself “I wonder where I would have been if I had gone through with it.” I decided to make sure that I would always know that answer, hence, FullOut Xtreme Cheer was born. FOXC, as we call it, is designed to teach, encourage, and share our love and passion of cheerleading. I have carefully thought through what I want when it comes to teaching the athletes. I believe that we not only teach cheerleading but also teach and share life lessons that we hope these athletes take with them as they grow in life. The goal is to find and foster the potential in every athlete that joins our FOXC family. We are not only growing amazing athletes, we are assisting in growing amazing individuals.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Nothing worth it is easy. First challenge is always financial in my life. I started very small with only 7 kids and rented space in a gymnastics gym. I started classes to help with training and with my second year I went to 12 kids. After the second year, I was getting too big for the small floor space I was using. It got to the point that I knew I would lose people if I couldn’t provide a bigger facility. After talking to my mom about it, she offered to help me out with getting the finances. The next challenge for me was getting everyone in my family on board with me and the commitment I was about to make with my own brick and mortar gym. I really wanted it to be a family business but by this time, my family was all grown with their own lives. There would be no way to do it completely by myself so when the FOXC train started moving, my family jumped on board.

Location, location, location. A cheerleading gym has certain aspects that need to be considered when finding a location. The building has to be able to fit a full 52×46 floor with no poles in the middle. That does not include any of the training mats. Oh yeah, equipment! Spring floor, tumbling mats, barrels, wedge mats, tumbling track just to name a few is what is needed to truly help teach tumbling. Nope, didn’t have any of this!

The toughest part has been just creating everything from the ground up. Cheerleading gyms are not a dime a dozen and there are not really many resources for building a one.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We are a cheerleading and tumbling gym. We house competitive All Star Cheerleading teams, cheerleading tumbling classes, and cheerleading classes. We also offer private lessons for cheerleading and we rent our facility for local cheerleading teams. I believe what sets us apart from other are several things. First is our facility. Although I have not been inside every cheerleading gym in San Antonio, of the ones I have been in, I believe that our facility is one of the nicest. Our parent viewing area is very clean, welcoming and comfortable. Second is our family style. My husband, who is mostly in the parent side of the gym, knows all our parents and talks to them everyday. Not only about cheer but about their lives and about ours. Being mostly in the gym with the athletes, I know all of our students. We talk about school and family and things going on in their lives.

I like to say that we specialize in taking beginners at any age and coaching them to their highest potential. After time in the gym, if an athlete walks out better than when they first walked in, we have succeeded.

We LOVE our FOXC name! My son-in-law actually came up with that from our full name FullOut Xtreme Cheer. It has become so catchy and I love saying “I’m not a regular coach, I’m a FOXC coach!”

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I have always said that there will be no shortage of cheerleaders. Yes, we have girls that age out but there are so many kids that are aging in. Even if it is a passing phase, there will always be a child that wants to be a cheerleader. With the increased exposure of cheerleading through television shows, the interest is higher than before and will only continue to grow. Even through Covid, companies found a way to continue having competitions so gyms continued to produce teams and routines, FOXC included. The number of teams in these virtual competitions was not significantly less than those at an in person competition so there was no shortage in competitors.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.foxc.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fulloutxtremecheer
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fulloutxtremecheer