After 25-year veteran gymnastics coach Lenny Lewis saw his youngest daughter, Cheyanne, graduate from Mercer Island High School last year, there was some speculation among booster club members that the high school would lose its longest-tenured athletic coach.

“A lot of people were wondering after she made it through if I would coach another year,” Lewis said. “Yeah, I’m back. I just can’t get enough.”

Gymnastics is very much in Lewis’ blood, which it has to be for someone who divides their time between working at Boeing during the day, coaching high school gymnastics in the afternoon and then heading over to Connect Cheer in Bellevue, where he works nights as a tumbling coach. It’s easy for a busy man like Lewis to lose track of time, as he embarks on his 26th year as gymnastics coach.

“Isn’t that weird?” he asks aloud after mentioning the length of his tenure. “I can’t believe it’s been that long. It just doesn’t seem like it.”

Though Lewis will admit he’s seen more successful years at Mercer Island. Despite high hopes heading into last season, the Islanders failed to advance out of KingCo to the district meet, placing fifth overall as a team.

“To place fifth at KingCo, I’ve never seen fifth. I don’t think I’ve ever placed that low at KingCo,” Lewis said. “And it wasn’t because we didn’t have talent, it was because the other teams had great talent.”

Lewis attributed last year’s finish to the strength of other teams on the uneven bars, an event where the Islanders weren’t throwing “giants”, or bigger moves, to earn more points. “I’m focusing on bars this year,” he said. “We’re going in and working on skills and trying to get girls to do their routines early.”

Graduating 12 seniors last year, the Islanders saw a lot of talent go out the door, but will look to bounce back this year with cleaner routines through hard work and confidence-building.

“We’re hoping they can become a cohesive team that roots each other on and inspires each other to do better,” Lewis said.

“If we can get them to believe, ‘I can stay on this event, we can do this,’ we’ll score well… we can beat people.”