A climb from the ashes: Field of Dreams Gymnastics reopens one year after fire
Published 5:02 pm Friday, May 2, 2025
Coach Barry Keeley, atop a platform his gymnasts use to practice safely performing flips and other acrobatics, poses with the entire class present at an April 29 practice. At bottom right are new owners Alicia Nelson and Rachael Peabody and Nelson’s husband, Randall.
Lynex Thomas hangs from a bar.
West Eaves climbs a rope.
Francine Peabody, in front, and Whitley DaSilva hang from the high bar. Below, from left, are Kate Phillips, Riverlyn Ross, Cerenity Page, Elena Mieras, Sawyer Knight and Anna Carrillos.
Riverlyn Ross practices flipping from the trampoline.
Anna Carrillos swings from the uneven bars.
Payson Stark balances atop uneven bars.
Ivy Kole swings from the bar as her brother, Luca, looks on.
Francine Peabody practices flipping in mid air.
Field of Dreams Gymnastics has reopened behind Meadow Lawn and Pest on Brewers Neck Boulevard following last year's fire at its former home in the Isle of Wight Industrial Park. Here, Ivy Kole, who’s among Field of Dreams’ gymnasts from before the fire, practices hanging from the uneven bars. (Photos by Stephen Faleski | The Smithfield Times)
Payson Stark leaps from the mat onto the trampoline.
Cerenity Page climbs a rope.
Payson Stark practices flipping in mid air.
Ivy Kole hangs from a swing bar.
Field of Dreams Gymnastics’ Jan. 19 reopening at its new location off Brewers Neck Boulevard marked a year and a day since a fire burned down its former home.
The early 2024 blaze destroyed a 23,000-square-foot warehouse in the Isle of Wight Industrial Park, displacing multiple tenants and turning gymnastics equipment into a heap of twisted metal and ash. Isle of Wight County Fire and Rescue officials ruled the fire accidental but never determined an exact cause.
Field of Dreams’ efforts to reopen took another hit when its insurance provider denied its $160,000 reimbursement claim.
“We lost everything; they didn’t pay a dime,” said Coach Barry Keeley, himself a former competition gymnast at the University of Iowa during the 1960s, which he calls the “glory years” of men’s collegiate gymnastics.
Keeley, now 82, is no stranger to rebuilding in the face of adversity. The roughly 2,000-square-foot space behind Meadow Lawn and Pest and adjacent to Coastal RV is Field of Dreams’ fourth home in six years.
He’d been coaching the daughters of naval surgeon Marshall Green at Windsor Gymnastics, 15 miles south of Smithfield, when he found himself abruptly laid off. Field of Dreams found its first home, and namesake, when Green offered the use of his 2,500-square-foot cattle barn on a private dirt street dubbed “Field of Dreams Road” in a rural area just outside Smithfield. When the Navy transferred Green to Lynchburg in 2022, Field of Dreams moved into the 6,300-square-foot detached gymnasium at what is now Hampton Roads Classical, a private school located at the campus of the former James River Christian Academy. When Hampton Roads Classical repurposed the campus in 2023, Field of Dreams relocated to the warehouse, only to be forced out by the fire.
‘The small world got smaller’
Keeley said he was able to buy replacement gymnastics equipment in like-new condition for “20 cents on the dollar.”
He’d been at a gymnastics meet in North Carolina when Nick Hess, whose daughter, Mackenzie, had been on Field of Dreams’ 2024 competition team, alerted him to an advertisement for gymnastics equipment in a suburb of New York City.
“I knew I had to get up there,” Keeley said.
After driving 13 hours to Warwick, New York, he met Mark Potempa, a contractor who’d renovated a 7,000-square-foot space in his home in the mountains into a gym for his children, and their friends, who’d since lost interest. Keeley would ultimately make three trips back and forth to Warwick.
Potempa, Keeley said he’d learned during those visits, had grown up in Libertyville, Illinois, at the time Keeley had operated Gymnastics Unlimited branches in other nearby Chicago suburbs.
“The small world got smaller,” Keeley said.
Many of the tumbling mats, Keeley learned, had been sold to Potempa by Kelly Crumbley, who’d been one of Keeley’s students in Illinois. Keeley also purchased a “spring floor” consisting of 2-inch-thick carpeted foam atop 5-inch foam slabs, plus a second 2-inch carpeted foam layer atop a 6-inch spring subfloor. Keeley learned it had been designed by Jay Thornton, who was captain of the University of Iowa’s gymnastics team in 2000 and whom Keeley had met when he organized a reunion at his alma mater that year. Thornton now owns American Gymnast, a manufacturer of gymnastics and fitness equipment.
“Mark sold us thousands of dollars of carpeted foam, mats and equipment for 20 cents on the dollar because he wanted to help keep the Field of Dreams opportunity alive,” Keeley said.
Though the 2,000-square-foot space behind Meadow Lawn and Pest is smaller than the 3,500 square feet he’d had at the warehouse, Keeley said he now has three times as much spring floor than he’d had before the fire. Keeley said Potempa sold him the carpeted foam mats for $600. New mats typically sell for $1,200 per 42-foot-long, 6-foot-wide roll, not counting shipping charges, Keeley said.
Keeley said he was able to make the smaller space work by custom building Field of Dreams’ new set of uneven bars, which are made from recycled parts, including two rails Potempa included with the sale for free. There’s no floor plates, no cables, “yet it’s rock solid,” Keeley said. “Nobody has a set of bars like this. If you don’t need cables or floor plates, it saves room.”
The two repurposed rails, Keeley said, were formerly used in the stage production of “The Lion King” at Disneyland, in which Crumbley’s son was one of the acrobats. The rails typically sell for over $1,000 apiece.
The owner of the metal building that now houses Meadow Lawn and Pest and Field of Dreams even put a new roof on the building and installed new lighting in the space at no charge, Keeley said.
Keeley, Field of Dreams’ owners Alicia Nelson and Rachael Peabody, and their husbands, Randall Nelson and Matt Peabody, did most of the renovations themselves. Keeley showed photos of the space in its pre-renovated condition, which had holes exposing it to the outdoors and an oddly placed open-air toilet that’s since been converted into a functioning bathroom. The two owners each have children in the gymnastics program.
Rachael said she started her daughter at Field of Dreams three months before the fire.
“We loved it,” she said.
The renovations took roughly six months since the space behind Meadow Lawn and Pest came available last year. During Field of Dreams’ year without a permanent home, Keeley, Nelson and Peabody spent six months hauling gymnastics equipment in and out of the Smithfield Wrestling Gym attached to Hope Presbyterian Church on Benns Church Boulevard and another four months doing the same at Ebenezer United Methodist Church in Suffolk. Field of Dreams also briefly operated out of Hurricane Gymnastics in Chesapeake, a roughly 45-minute drive from Smithfield.
Field of Dream’s new location halfway between Smithfield and Carrollton “is perfect,” Keeley said.
Focusing on strength
Field of Dreams now has nearly 70 children ranging from age 3 to 14, including a dozen boys, enrolled or on a waiting list, which is more than its pre-fire enrollment. About 25 of those were members from before the fire.
One component of Field of Dreams that hasn’t returned since the fire is its competition gymnastics team, which last year saw two girls – who are now members of different gyms – take home first-place awards at the platinum level in the Excel Division for their age groups in the inaugural Amateur Athletic Union Virginia District state championship.
Keeley said a competition team will return if and when parents want one. For now, he’s more focused on strength-building.
Keeley partly blames a rise in the amount of time children spend staring at screens on digital devices for the decline he’s observed in their physical activity. Most of the children who haven’t taken gymnastics lessons before “can’t do one pull-up,” Keeley said. “My first goal with your children is I’ve got to get them stronger.”
He’s also become disillusioned with the high-pressure judging environment, contending the sport’s transition from the former “risk, originality and virtuosity” criteria to a point-based system has taken individuality out of competitions.
“I train kids at a demanding level within their ability to have fun and feel like champions whether or not they ever compete,” Keeley said. “We don’t have a competitive team “at the present time” as we rebuild the program, but I always train kids to become outstanding at gymnastics, stressing strength, power, flexibility and tumbling which will help them to succeed in gymnastics or any other sport and they will be much less injury prone.”
Typical class sizes range from 10 to 12 children per class.
“We’re small enough still where we know all the kids,” Alicia said.
