Alyssa is a gymnast by trade, which provided a solid foundation to develop a multitude of athletic and acrobatic disciplines throughout her life. By age seven, she joined St. Cloud School of Dance and Gymnastics and started completing USAG Junior Olympic Gymnastics. By the age of 10 she was a level 8 USAG competitor, claiming individual state championships in every level. This is when her gymnastics training opened the door to the world of competitive diving.
At the age of 12, she tried out for her middle school diving team, and was honored to be placed on the high school varsity team as a seventh grader. While warming up for a competition her 8th grade year, she hit the diving board, shattering most of her fingers in both hands and rupturing tendons to the point of disrepair. Refusing to miss gymnastics practice, she spent 25 hours/week for the next 5 months in the gymnastics gym strength training and perfecting the dance portions of her routines. This is when her love of coaching and choreography really took hold.
She became an assistant coach and was coaching her own classes by the age of 14. It took 2 years of bi-weekly physical therapy appointments and 2 surgeries to regain partial function of her hands. She begin competing gymnastics and diving again, and she joined her high school gymnastics team. She was voted team captain her junior and senior year, and was given the opportunity to compete with various collegiate gymnastics teams.
After high school she moved from Minnesota to Iowa for a reputable nursing school that didn’t have a gymnastics team. Feeling lost without gymnastics she became a collegiate cheerleader and started coaching boys and girls USAG Junior Olympic gymnastics in Iowa. Eventually she could not ignore her call to be a coach and left her profession of nursing to coach gymnastics full time. She became the head USAG team coach leading many teams to state championship titles along the way. She also became the recreational gymnastics and birthday party director for the next 8 years. With over 1,100 students enrolled in the program, Miss Alyssa was put in charge of hiring and training 20 coaches to join their team. Soon she became the youngest Junior Olympic judge in Iowa, and began developing tumbling curriculum and providing instructor training at various dance studios in the Midwest.
Alyssa continued to evolve her acrobatic abilities as an adult and became the first hand to hand balancers in cedar rapids in 2014. She began subleasing space to run her own tumbling program at a silks studio and added aerial silks and lyra to her acrobatic arsenal in 2015. In 2016 she combined her love for gymnastics with the art of fire performing, and became the first ever fire-tumbler of her kind. In 2018 she developed a unique form of partner acrobatic fire performing and has been hired as a fire performer for a variety of events in the Midwest.
In October of 2018, Miss Alyssa purchased a 40’ school bus in Iowa and drove it to Durango, Colorado where she began the transformation process. Miss Alyssa’s CircBus, LLC, is currently the only bus of its kind in the world offering birthday parties, classes, private lessons, and performances pertaining to gymnastics, ninja, rock climbing, aerial acrobatics, and fire performing. In addition to owning Miss Alyssa’s CircBus, Alyssa currently works as a Judge consult for Durango gymnastics where she identifies major deductions in the USAG teams routines in preparation for upcoming competitions, as well as the coaching the competitive team in the case of a team coaches absence. She is also employed as a private contractor for multiple dance studios around Durango; providing advanced tumbling workshops to the cities top dancers.
