There are a lot of new things for Sue Ball to get accustomed to in California, but there’s nothing new about running a YMCA center for the Northwest Y’s new executive director.
A former gymnastics coach who got her start at the local Y in Little Rock, Ark., Ball–most recently with the YMCA of the Suncoast in Florida–moved across the country to run one of the YMCA of Silicon Valley’s busiest branches, a challenge that she said would also give her the “fresh start” she had been looking for. She takes over for former Northwest Y executive director Elaine Glissmeyer, who is now heading the El Camino campus.
“The Northwest Y is our largest branch, a wonderfully local branch serving two communities,” said Pam Von Wiegand, executive vice president and chief operations officer for the YMCA of Silicon Valley. “We were looking for someone with depth of experience in a variety of settings. Sue’s worked in the community, worked in helping with their wellness, worked in child care, worked in creating a YMCA in a whole new town, and now she’s very eager to find ways to serve the Silicon Valley community.”
The nationwide search process included a candidate pool of 40 that was eventually narrowed down to three finalists. What made Ball stand out was her “depth and range of experience,” Von Wiegand said.
Ball says she’s already got a few goals she’d like to meet and ideas about how she’d like to improve the Northwest campus, but she’d still first like to meet and get to know all the staff and as many members as she can. Her official first day was June 24, and she admits she still sometimes gets turned around in the 35,000-square-foot center.
She has already noticed, though, that the campus is in need of expansion.
On any given day, lines can sometimes form out the door at the Northwest Y. The campus sees about 1,400 members a day and 10,000 a week, according to Stephanie Hannah, the Northwest Y’s director of communications.
“At certain times of the day that Y is very, very full,” Von Wiegand said. “The building started out in the ’70s, and our challenge is to meet the needs of all the people that want to come and help all those people with their wellness needs.”
Ball has had experience in growing YMCA branches. While at the YMCA of the Suncoast, she helped double membership at the Spring Hill campus and oversaw an expansion into Citrus County. She faces a similar challenge in her new position at the Cupertino center, where capital improvements were last done in 2001.
“One of the things that appealed to me the most about this job was that we do hope to go into a capital campaign in the next few years and build a new facility. This Y is just bursting at the seams; the membership is just exploding,” Ball said, adding that on some of the busiest days members have to take tickets in order to get into an exercise class.
“This facility has served the community well for the last 30 years, but the community needs a bigger, newer, fresher, more modern updated facility, and we’re going to do that.”
Another goal for the new executive director is to boost outreach and membership, in parallel with the expansion plans.
YMCA officials are looking at Sunnyvale for more participation and already have physical education and after-school programs in place at Sunnyvale schools, including Vargas, San Miguel, Ellis, Bishop, Fairwood, Lakewood and Columbia. There’s also been interest in starting swimming programs at Sunnyvale facilities.
Of the Northwest Y’s current 3,900 member units, which are made up of one to four members per unit, 972 units are from Sunnyvale.
“We really are trying to offer more in Sunnyvale,” Ball said. “Sunnyvale is very important here, that we do more outreach into that community.”
For Ball, whose clientele list included a certain Clinton family while she was at the Little Rock YMCA, her new job means taking on a different challenge in a more diverse community–3,000 miles away from her home state of Florida–and she appears eager to take on the task.
“This is the one I wanted and I went after it, so here I am,” she said.
For more information on the Northwest Y, visit www.ymcasv.org/northwest.
