Higher Power - USA Gym Supply Springboards Success into Other Community Endeavors

A business named USA Gymnastics Supply conjures up thoughts of equipment for gymnasts and other athletes. What it doesn't conjure up are thoughts of feeding the hungry, providing a formal Christian education or operating a Christian bookstore.

Nevertheless, the entities under the USA Gym Supply umbrella do all these things that arguably share a common goal - to help people land on their own two feet with grace and strength.

The athletic mats made by USA allow for a soft physical landing, while its other missions guide their patrons to a soft spiritual landing.

Mark Ball is president and owner of USA Gym Supply, 319 McKinley, which has been in business 27 years. The company's 30-35 employees work at the USA Gym office, in the manufacturing plant, the Central Kansas Christian Academy, Hungry Heart Soup Kitchen & Life Giving Center and Everything Under the Son, which is a Christian Bookstore.

Start to Finish - Foam laminating stock is stacked high in USA Gym's warehouse, waiting to become a special work of art, as pictured with the Elite wainscoting panels for the Discoverers of Columbus High School in Nebraska.

Ball, who was raised in Medicine Lodge, acknowledged this was not his original career plan but said he is traveling the path God had in mind.

"I was a college athlete in track and gymnastics," Ball said. "While competing at a meet, a coach told me he was looking for a graduate assistant in Iowa."

Equipped with his bachelor's degree in education from Fort Hays State University and his master's in education from the University of Northern Iowa, Ball soon learned high school teaching positions were hard to come by.

"I just happened to be driving through Great Bend and stopped at GBI (Great Bend Industries) and got a job using my manufacturing experience," he recalled, explaining he once worked for Cross Manufacturing in Hays.

A short time later he met Nancy Rogers at Southern Baptist Church and learned her daughter had injured her ankle in gymnastics.

Pulling Through - Eliseo Velasco Jr pulls yards of laminated materials through another specialty machine at USA Gym and Supply Company. The bulky products manufactured and sold by USA Gym and Supply mean the company must have large storage and working spaces to handle the unfinished and finished products.

"That's how I learned there was a gym class in town," Ball said. "It was an organization with 40 or 50 kids. And there I was, a college gym coach."

Ball got together with the parents in 1982 and they sponsored a fund-raising dinner at the 3i show, where they raised enough money to pay off the equipment loan. Over the next couple of years, the class grew to 250 students, with a waiting list.

"We needed more equipment but I thought it was too expensive," Ball continued. "I couldn't imagine it cost that much. I had fabrication experience from working in manufacturing, and I went to the library and figured out the foam side of gym equipment.

"I bought a band saw and ran classified ads in gymnastics publications. That's how a business gets started; see a niche and try to fill it."

USA Gym no longer has gymnastics classes. Ball explained that he wants to do justice to his projects and the business simply got too busy.

Sew Long - Sonja Julian sews a seemingly endless strip of canvas for a tumble trampoline bed at USA Gym and Supply.

Another early step in his gym supply venture was buying Great Bend Manufacturing's tarp division and sewing equipment. A North Main building housed the sewing operation for several years. (A Baptist Church is now in that location.)

"Then we started doing more customized things," Ball said. "When we see an area where we might be successful, we enter that marketplace. We have had more things fail than succeed. But you keep trying to fill a niche."

As his business prospered, Ball had the means to start another venture. Hungry Heart Soup Kitchen opened in 1993 at the former Roosevelt Junior High building at Broadway and Williams.

"We felt like a lot of needs around town were not being dealt with very well," Ball said. "This soup kitchen gives people a hot meal. But it not only feeds them, it lets them know people care about them."

Ring Leader - Rose Trantham assembles custom trampoline pads for USA Gym and Supply. Trantham has worked for USA Gym and Supply for 11 years.

An employee talks with people at Hungry Heart about necessities such as temporary housing, medical assistance and utility bills. "We go over the applications and see who we can help," Ball said.

In the past, Central Kansas Christian Academy classes were held at the Assembly of God Church and Grace Community Church. Now this USA Gym entity is in one location at 215 McKinley, where 85 students attend grades K-8.

"I never taught school," Ball said, noting he thought he would teach gymnastics and physical education. "That is not the door God opened for us. The business is a vehicle to make money to make a difference."

As Ball's Lasting Life Ministries Foundation grew, he bought the current USA building in 2001. And in 1994 he purchased a downtown Christian bookstore and later moved it to what is now Everything Under the Son, 407 McKinley.

Flame Laminators - A close up of the flame laminator shows the flame that seals the poly pieces together for extra padding. Eliseo Velasco and Nelson Martinez guide the poly pads through the flame laminator. In the same industrial spirit that brought USA Gym and Supply Company into being, most of the company's specialty equipment, like the flame laminator, is made in-house.

"We wanted a Christian supply center in town but it couldn't make it on its own, like any other small-ticket retail outlet," Ball commented. "It doesn't have anything to do with making money but we always hope it breaks even. It is about being a ministry to impact people.

"We did have some down years after 9-11 when school districts cut budgets for our type of products," Ball said. "But we have a lot of diversity because not everything is down at the same time."

Ball and his wife, Krista, have four biological and three adopted children. Another child will be adopted soon. "We are a half-way busy family," Ball said. "I am nobody special, honest. God has blessed us."

From Gym Mats to Doo Rags, USA Gym Supply Covers It All While gymnastics mats are certainly a staple at USA Gym Supply's 62,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, they are not its only product. The business is a foam fabricator and flame laminator for a variety of gymnasium supplies, including special mats for cheerleaders and martial arts enthusiasts, as well as gym-wall pads, president Mark Ball explained. The company's protective padding has been the choice for Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and major college teams, and public and private elementary and high schools. Products come in dozens and dozens of sizes and colors, with screen-printed team mascots. The manufacturing side of the business is complemented by the sewing operation, and most products are sold wholesale to dealers across North America. Other niche ventures include: making trampoline beds; shipping head wraps (doo-rags) that eventually end up at Harley Davidson dealerships; making hard foam insulation pads for refrigeration units in grocery stores; making polyurethane foam blocks for gymnastics landing pits that result in more confidence for the beginner; and making sleeping mats for soldiers. (Ball noted the market for these mats is way down because of military budget cuts, which means more soldiers are sleeping in the sand.) "We do most of our work with people, not machines," Ball noted. "We are in business for people, not machines. We build most of our equipment. For example, we could have spent $250,000 on a flame laminator but it would do the exact same thing as the machine we built. So, we are not financing debt." The well-insulated manufacturing facility is heated with coal, at a third of the cost of natural gas. "This gives us a competitive advantage," Ball explained. "To put it into perspective, we save $30,000 to $35,000 a winter by heating with coal." Ball also noted that all USA Gym Supply products are affordable and meet the highest performance and safety standards. The skilled staff, he said, constantly strives to be innovative. The products are easy to install, and in many cases, the company provides the necessary materials such as spray adhesive or Velcro.