Before founding Adventure Recreation, Andrea Ivy was a gymnast who couldn’t stay off her hands.
“As a kid, my parents would see me more on my hands than not,” she laughs. “Oh, I need to use the restroom—jump on my hands, walk… just all around the house.”
Today, that same playful spirit lives on in her Rohnert Park-based youth recreation center—now part of the SOMO Village community—where toddlers through teens come to jump, swing, tumble, and discover what their bodies (and minds) can do.
From gymnastics and Ninja Warrior classes to open gyms, birthday parties, and kids’ nights out, Adventure Recreation is built around a simple idea: movement as a pathway to confidence, resilience, and joy.
We sat down with Andrea for our SOMO Village Community Builders series to talk about how Adventure Recreation started, why she walked away from the traditional competitive model, and what it looks like to help kids grow up strong in a screen-heavy world.
Andrea: “We started almost 14 years ago, and I grew up a gymnast. And it’s something that when I was like nine years old, I was like, I wanna open a gymnastics gym.”
That dream was specific—even at nine.
Andrea: “My dream literally was at nine years old: you walk into the gymnastics gym, you drop off your child, and then you go walk next door… and in my dream [there] had like a one-way mirror that parents could watch their kids in gymnastics while they do their fitness classes or, you know, be able to work out.”
She started coaching at 14—toddlers all the way through team-level gymnasts—and kept returning to the sport no matter where life took her.
Andrea: “Through high school [I] was a coach and then went to Humboldt State University and got my degree in recreation administration… everywhere I moved to, I always was a gymnastics instructor and so it just kind of like kept drawing me back.”
A “gap job” at a gym in Redding turned into something much bigger.
Andrea: “I was able to just coach some classes and then all of a sudden they’re like, Hey, can you help us out with some office work?… a little bit more, a little bit more. And then come to find out that they were not able to continue owning the business and [I] had the chance to take over their gymnastics gym. And that was almost 14 years ago. My daughter was three months old… wildly crazy to take on that adventure. But we did.”
After several years of growing the gym, the building was sold and Andrea and her family faced a tough question: where do we go next? They explored Bend, Oregon and South Lake Tahoe, but eventually chose Petaluma—and, later, SOMO Village—as home.
Andrea: “We’re so excited to be at SOMO and seeing all the littles coming in… we do everything. So, open gyms… preschool age kiddos… afternoon open gyms… kids’ night outs, birthday parties, classes for gymnastics and for Ninja Warrior.”
Andrea’s own experience in high-level competitive gymnastics shaped what she wanted Adventure Recreation not to be.
Andrea: “We’ve always really wanted to be child-focused. Growing up in a very competitive world of things… it taught me so many things, but it was also very strenuous. And not a lot of time to go see friends or go to the movies or even school dance.”
When the gym moved from Redding to Petaluma, she made a deliberate shift.
Andrea: “For the first eight years we didn’t have a competitive program. We went back to just recreation only. We wanted to try to find every kid out there and if they just wanted to learn how to do a cartwheel with their friend, if they wanted to swing from the monkey bars, just be the best that they could be with whatever goals that they had in mind.”
Eventually, she introduced a more flexible competitive option—the Excel program—but still held onto that core philosophy.
Andrea: “Sure, there might be some individuals that [a very intense program] is a great world for, but for the most part, most kids, that’s too much… So we wanted to give the kids a little glimpse of competition, but without all the hours in the gym… so they can play other sports. They can go to school dances.”
Ninja Warrior, with its obstacle courses and hanging elements, fits right into that vision of playful skill-building.
Andrea: “Ninja Warrior to me has all the hanging elements that I think upper body strength is something that we all wanna work on. And if any kiddo could come and train with me for a couple years or up until they’re seven or eight and then go try any other sport, I feel like it’s a good foundation to set them up for success for anything else they choose in the future.”
Parents are increasingly candid about why they’re calling.
Andrea: “Lately I have found that many parents are actually calling, saying, My kids are on screens way too much. I need to sign up for… seven days a week, what do you have for me?”
Andrea laughs at the seven-day-a-week request—but she understands the concern.
Andrea: “Come try one or two days a week with us, and then go try martial arts or soccer, or whatever drives their passion. Because it doesn’t have to be gymnastics. That’s what excites me.”
Inside the gym, the experience is intentionally low-tech.
Andrea: “Getting kids off screens is super important… Nothing is powered by screens other than me having a computer up at the front to sign kids in on. But they get to just run and play and use their own bodies to swing and jump and play, which is nice.”
One of the most common patterns Andrea sees is shyness—especially in younger kids who grew up during or just after the pandemic.
Andrea: “There’s a lot of shy kiddos out there. Especially, I think, kind of going through COVID… it was a time that there wasn’t as much socialization.”
That first class isn’t always a magical moment.
Andrea: “One thing that we have found is the first time a kiddo might come to us… maybe it’s about one in four kids [who] are very shy. And so they come in and they might have a not so successful class because of it.”
Her message to parents? Don’t give up after one attempt.
Andrea: “We try to educate the parent around it, saying, Hey, try out one time is not gonna give them the support they need… We ask that they try three or four times and then they might start to come out of their shell that little bit. They might start to trust us.”
Underneath it all, she says, it’s about gently expanding a child’s comfort zone.
Andrea: “Little tiny wins is what we’re looking for… just keep at it. And I think that’s… to just keep pushing them outside of their boundaries and outside of their comfort zones.”
Andrea has spent years shaping the feel of the space.
Andrea: “I really want the vibe for Adventure Recreation… a very inviting, encouraging environment. Someone that you’re gonna walk in, you’re gonna see smiling faces at the front counter.”
From there, the focus turns quickly to the child.
Andrea: “We’re right there hoping to just engage in the child right away. So, you know, if it’s Johnny that’s taking classes and they’re, say, three years old, I might walk over, squat down and get nice and close and say, My name’s Miss Andrea, what’s your name?”
She tries to give kids a sense of what’s coming before they begin.
Andrea: “Hey Johnny, do you see out here?… We’re gonna start with this obstacle course and then we’re gonna go here and try to tell them what they’re gonna expect.”
Parents are welcome on the floor at first if that helps their child feel safe.
Andrea: “We encourage parents to come out on the floor if needed… to kind of be near a coach to feel comfortable, and then we’ll help them progress from there to hopefully be independent of parents. That is a big goal, is that we want them to engage with a coach and to be able to learn from them.”
Andrea’s approach is informed by her own two children—who couldn’t be more different.
Andrea: “My daughter is like, go-getter. She is Miss Independent. She will jump into any situation almost with a stranger and be like, Okay, bye, I’m gonna leave for the weekend.… Where my son is like, Whoop, like no new people. He needs to observe a lot.”
For her, good parenting and good coaching share a similar goal.
Andrea: “Taking the time to see what your child needs and how to best support them… we want like strong independence and we want the emotional aspect as well and the emotional support of what does that look like, what does that feel like to learn from other adults or even teens.”
Some of those “other adults” are actually teenagers—high school students Andrea has brought onto her staff.
Andrea: “I almost find that I’m starting to get to an age where a lot of the kids are looking up to them a little bit more than me… the four or five year olds are all like googly-eyed over Coach Ryan, let’s say, ’cause he’s doing all these fun tricks and engaging them in a different way.”
That intergenerational mentorship is part of what makes the community so special.
Andrea: “We’ve had a couple parents that have said, My kid will only be dropped off here. They feel so comfortable, it feels like their other home and that’s exactly what we want it to feel like.”
These days, Andrea sees herself increasingly as a mentor to her staff as well as her students.
Andrea: “I feel like I’m transforming into that space… igniting now my staff to take the torch and to keep going.”
Andrea makes it as easy as possible to take the next step.
Andrea: “If you just type in Adventure Recreation, you should find us. But it’s skillmeetswill.com, which is also our slogan. So skill meets will. You can email, text the number, call, and our website has every piece of information on it. So if you’re looking for birthday parties, our next kids’ night out, open gyms, class days and times, everything’s on there for you, hopefully nice and easy.”
If you’ve been looking for a way to help your kids move, play, and grow in a supportive community—off screens and out in the world—Adventure Recreation is already doing that work right here in SOMO Village.
To explore upcoming classes, open gyms, kids’ nights out, and more, visit skillmeetswill.com and keep an eye out for the latest updates from Adventure Recreation at SOMO Village.
And if you’d like to hear more of Andrea’s story in her own words, including the full origin story and her philosophy on coaching, watch the full Community Builders interview with her here.