Flushing Armory evicts gymnastics team

With less than a day's notice, and one day before the beginning of the four-month gymnastics season, the nationally renowned gymnastics team, the Flushing Bandits, was forced to abandon the facility that has housed them for the past 10 years.
Joining athletes, parents and coaches to protest the sudden eviction from their training facility at the Flushing Armory, City Councilmember John Liu described the eviction as a &#8220mean Halloween trick.”
&#8220It's just wrong for the city to suddenly pull the mat out from under them. We ask the Mayor to cancel this,” Liu said.
Over the years, many Flushing Bandits have won championships and college scholarships. Kamla D. Modi, former athlete-turned-coach credits the armory's elite caliber gymnastics facility with ensuring her athletic scholarship to her first choice college, Rutgers University.  &#8220It saddens me to think that the opportunity to excel in a fantastic competitive sport . . . may be stripped of the next generation of athletes in the Flushing community,” she said.
Long-time Bandits sponsor, the Flushing YMCA took the opportunity of the resignation of a former director of the program, Dan Albert, to review and eventually withdraw its sponsorship of the team. The athletes' parents were in the middle of negotiations with the city to maintain the team, at least until February when the season ends.
Tom Dantschisch of Concerned Parents of Flushing Gymnastics Program said he didn't understand how the team didn't get the usual 30 days notice. &#8220It was one day and we were out. They were dismantling the equipment as we were protesting.” The Police Department's Queens North task force currently occupies the armory and has been reported to want the whole building.
Dantschisch is very disappointed in the city. &#8220If these kids were drug addicts or pregnant teenagers they'd get a building built for them. Our kids are the kind society wants, competitive, disciplined, hard working and focused, and yet the city treated them like . . . I don't know, like dogs.”
Kelly Caltagirone, another former athlete-turned-coach at the armory, said, &#8220I have been part of the Flushing YMCA gymnastics program for the past 22 years. I've spent more time there with my teammates and coach than at my own home with my own family.” Caltagirone attributes her success in being able to compete at the Junior Olympic National Championships to the top-of-the-line facility at the armory.
According to Dantschisch, the Flushing YMCA has made space available for the team at their Northern Boulevard headquarters; however, that building only has room for conditioning exercises, not full training.