Bending over Backwards to Help
If you ask Jon and Cindy Aardema where they imagined life taking them, back when they were Marietta High School sweethearts, owning one of the Southeast’s largest gymnastics training centers would have never made the list. But looking out at the Gymnastics Academy of Atlanta in Kennesaw, a 40,000-square-foot facility that buzzes with activity, they are exactly where they’re supposed to be.
Little ones giggle and squeal between crooked somersaults, leaps into foam training pits, and jumps on in-ground trampolines. Across the gym, college-bound athletes hang on their coaches’ words, glide on uneven bars and pommel horses, and work to stick landings. Seated in a viewing area upstairs, parents and spectators take it all in.
“If I’m having a bad day, I just walk out through the doorway and watch,” Jon says. “It changes your perspective.”
Inside GAA are multiple spring floors, tumble strips, balance beams, training bars of every kind, sets of rings, vault tables, really any piece of equipment imaginable – including a 120-foot setup for Ninja Warrior training. There are also children of all ages, even those who’ve just learned to walk and are accompanied by parents.
Of the 1,800 girls and boys who frequent the gym and use the equipment, only about 200 are in the competitive program, training up to 20 hours a week. The rest are in the recreational program, coming in one-to-two hours a week. A dedicated staff of 75, most of them part-time employees, keep the various programs afloat while Jon and Cindy work behind the scenes and manage finances.
The husband-wife team bought the business, GAA for short, in 2003. Jon, a longtime baseball coach on the side, was burning out on his travel-heavy software career when he first began flirting with the idea of buying a sports-related business. And though neither of them had ever been gymnasts, their youngest daughter was and trained at the academy.
He was the booster club president, she was an active team mom, and the organization already felt like family. On the same day he learned his software job was being cut, the founder of GAA called to say she was ready to pass the torch.
They knew from the time they made the purchase that they wanted a bigger building than the one they were renting. That’s what eventually brought them to the current Cobb Parkway location, which they bought in 2008 and later expanded. That was also the year they first met Melanie Payne, who helped them navigate a loan during the financial crisis, long before Tandem Bank existed.
Melanie, now with Tandem, checked in with the couple over the years. She happened to call in 2022, amid GAA’s building expansion, when they were carrying two high-interest SBA loans. With her and Tandem’s help, they refinanced to a conventional loan and went on to save more than $7,000 a month.
“She’d been reaching out to me since 2008, checking in out of the blue. This time I thought, we need to do this,” Jon said. “I’m very thankful for her, to say the least. And I’m very thankful to Tandem for making it super, super easy.”
With the stress of their loan situation off the table, the couple can focus on making the academy all it can be for the community it serves.