Dana Wheeling
USAG, AAU Coach and Xcel Team Head Coach
Dana Wheeling was born and raised in Namibia. She started gymnastics at age 9 and continued through the end of high school, representing her country twice at the southern African regional meets. While in high school, she completed a beginner level coaching course and assisted with coaching her younger teammates. She also took a judges’ course at age 16 and judged at local meets.
She graduated in 1995 from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, earning her B.SC. in Physiotherapy.
After college, she returned home to Namibia to work in private practice. Shortly thereafter, she met her future husband, John, who was a visiting gymnastics coach from Lancaster, PA. He was spending a year in Namibia coaching at the local gymnastics club. By the end of 1996, they decided to travel to England and spend a year working and studying there, before getting married and moving to the USA in 1998. For the next 7 years, they both joined John’s father’s financial planning business and had little time left for being involved in gymnastics.
In 2002, they welcomed their son Kieren to the world, and their twin daughters, Maddie and Josie, followed in 2005. Shortly after the twins’ birth, they opted to return to Namibia so that the children could spend their younger years learning about their African heritage. Wheeling started working with her father and sister in the family safari business, something she is still involved with to this day.
Wheeling's mother is a high-level coach and former Brevet judge for Namibia for close to 40 years. Her sister has also coached gymnastics for over 25 years. With this love of gymnastics strong in their family, it was only a matter of time before they signed up their own children for moms and tots classes. And it then followed naturally that both John and Dana were pulled back into coaching as the gymnastics program grew.
As their children grew older, Wheeling migrated to coaching first the boys’ level 1-3 classes. And then, eventually she moved over to only coaching girls. She started from the bottom and learnt the basics but over the years, she attended various camps with visiting foreign coaches, and by the time they left Namibia in 2018, she was coaching up to the FIG junior level.