Our Story
BUILT WITH PURPOSE
Apex was created from the belief that athletes deserve environments intentionally designed to help them grow, as athletes and as people.
The vision for Apex extends beyond apparatus, programs, and facilities. It is about creating a culture where athletes feel supported, families feel valued, coaches feel empowered, and high standards are matched by positive leadership and genuine community connection.
The organisation has been shaped by years of professional experience across coaching, education, behavioural sciences, organisational systems, and athlete development.
Every decision surrounding Apex — from facility design and operational structure to coaching philosophy and community culture — has been guided by a long-term vision of creating something intentional, aspirational, and genuinely different.
THE BEGINNING OF APEX
Apex was founded in 2026 by Dr Lacey Schaefer, an American-born athlete, coach, educator, and researcher whose professional and personal experiences across sport, behavioural science, and education helped shape the broader vision underpinning the organisation.
The Academy reflects not only decades of coaching and athletic experience, but also years spent studying how environments influence confidence, behaviour, performance, motivation, and long-term development.
Much of the Apex model has therefore been built from lived experience, both inside sporting environments and beyond them.
FROM GYMNASTICS TO CHEERLEADING TO DANCE
Like many athletes, the journey started in gymnastics.
Growing up in the United States, Lacey competed through Women’s Artistic Gymnastics Level 8 within the optional levels system. Gymnastics provided the foundation not only for athletic development, but also for discipline, resilience, confidence, and a lifelong appreciation for movement and performance environments.
But retirement from gymnastics did not mean retirement from movement. After stepping away from competitive gymnastics, Lacey still loved tumbling and athletic performance. That passion naturally led into all-star cheerleading, where she spent several years training and competing within highly energetic and team-oriented environments.
From there came her next athletic evolution, transitioning from cheer to dance. Initially inspired by the pom and hip-hop styles commonly integrated within cheerleading routines, dance quickly became another passion pursued recreationally and eventually professionally.
Over time, it became increasingly obvious that these sports were deeply connected.
Gymnastics developed strength, aerial awareness, flexibility, and discipline. Cheerleading built teamwork, performance confidence, and dynamic athleticism. Dance refined artistry, movement quality, rhythm, and expression.
Many athletes naturally transitioned between these sports throughout different stages of their lives.
Movement does not exist in silos. The best athletes often grow across multiple disciplines.
Movement does not exist in silos.
OVER 2,000 SQM
Gymnastics warehouse planned for scale, flow and opportunity.
3 FULL-SIZED SPRING FLOORS
Expanded capacity for gymnastics, cheerleading, tumbling and allied sports.
DEDICATED DANCE STUDIOS
Hardwood flooring, mirrors and barres for movement and performance training.
PURPOSE-BUILT FLOW
Designed around athlete development, family experience and coaching visibility.
BUILDING THE FACILITY WE ALWAYS WANTED
The Apex facility is being intentionally designed around many of the positive experiences and lessons drawn from large-scale American training environments.
One of the defining features of those facilities was scale. Big gyms create opportunities.
More apparatus means better rotations, more repetitions, less standing around, and more meaningful athlete development opportunities.
That philosophy has directly shaped the Apex facility model.
With a gymnastics warehouse exceeding 2,000 square metres, three full-sized spring floors, dedicated dance studios, and large-scale multi-sport training environments, Apex is being designed as one of the largest facilities of its kind.
But the vision extends beyond size alone.
Growing up, Lacey’s home gym featured an elevated parent viewing platform overlooking the training floor. Parents could comfortably watch their children, athletes could still see and feel supported by their families, yet the physical separation reduced unnecessary interference between training environments and viewing spaces.
That small design decision left a lasting impression.
Many sporting facilities place parents and athletes on the same level, often creating distraction, congestion, stress, and tension between coaching and spectating environments.
Apex aims to intentionally design around these common operational frustrations to create a more positive experience for athletes, families, and coaches alike.
The broader goal is to create a facility where every design decision serves a developmental purpose.
A LIFETIME OF COACHING
Long before Apex officially existed, coaching was already a central part of Lacey’s life.
Across roughly twenty years of coaching experience, she has coached gymnastics, cheerleading, dance, trampoline, and tumbling across a wide variety of environments and participation levels.
This has included recreational classes, competitive athletes and teams, private lessons and small group trainings, choreography development, music mixing, and routine construction.
Dr Schaefer has coached within both single-sport facilities and large multi-disciplinary sporting environments integrating multiple programs under one roof.
The breadth of Lacey’s coaching experiences helped shape the understanding that strong athlete development is rarely about a single sport alone.
Instead, the strongest environments often share common characteristics: emotionally intelligent leadership, intentional operating systems, strong communication, professional governance structures, and supportive culture.
PSYCHOLOGY
Understanding confidence, motivation, learning and development.
SOCIOLOGY
Recognising how culture, groups and systems shape experience.
CRIMINOLOGY
Applying environmental and behavioural insight to organisational design.
TEACHING PRACTICE
Supporting coach education, mentoring and professional development.
THE ACADEMIC SIDE OF APEX ACADEMIES
Alongside coaching, Dr Schaefer pursued a parallel career in higher education and behavioural sciences.
Her academic qualifications include a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, a Master’s degree in Sociology, and a Doctorate in Criminal Justice.
For the past fifteen years, she has worked within the higher education sector as an academic and researcher, teaching university students while conducting empirical research across criminology and criminal justice.
Areas of expertise include criminological theory, offender rehabilitation, penology, organisational systems, behavioural science, positive psychology, and environmental criminology.
While these fields may initially appear unrelated to sport, many of the underlying principles have direct application within athletic environments.
Environmental criminology, for example, examines how surroundings influence behaviour and decision-making. That same understanding can be applied positively within sporting environments to shape motivation, behaviour, communication, confidence, culture, and performance outcomes.
At Apex, this knowledge influences everything from facility layout, coaching systems, and training flow through to factors like organisational culture, staff development, and athlete experience.
Dr Schaefer was also awarded Griffith University’s highest teaching honour in recognition of excellence in tertiary education and student engagement.
That experience shapes not only how athletes are coached at Apex, but also how coaches themselves are trained and developed.
Apex places strong emphasis on the use of evidence-informed teaching practices in coach education, mentoring, and leadership development.
The long-term vision includes providing educational workshops and professional development seminars for the broader sporting sector, helping elevate coaching and leadership standards beyond Apex.
Great coaching is not accidental. It is intentional, evidence-informed, and continuously developed.
Great coaching is not accidental.
A PROFESSIONALLY DESIGNED MULTI-SPORT ACADEMY
After relocating to Australia in 2013, Lacey worked within the local gymnastics sector and quickly recognised opportunities for innovation and growth within the broader market.
While many facilities offered strong individual programs, there appeared to be significant room for larger-scale multi-disciplinary environments, stronger organisational systems, enhanced coach development, and more intentional integration between sports such as gymnastics, cheerleading, dance, trampoline, and athletic development.
Apex was created in response to that opportunity.
The vision was not simply to open another gym.
The vision was to build something structurally different: a professionally designed, evidence-informed, multi-sport athletic academy.
The Apex brand was built around development, leadership, culture, education, and long-term growth.
The goal is ambitious. Apex aims to become one of the most recognisable and professionally respected facilities of its kind within Australia.
But more importantly, the goal is to create environments where athletes, families, and staff genuinely feel supported, inspired, challenged, and proud to belong.
THE CLIMB HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN
At its heart, Apex is the product of everything that shaped the journey along the way:
Athlete experiences,
Coaching lessons,
Educational practice,
Behavioural science,
Leadership development, and
Years spent studying how environments influence human growth and performance.
The result is not simply a gym.
It is an attempt to intentionally build the kind of environment that helps people chase their potential, both inside sport and beyond.
Apex is still growing, evolving, and coming to life — and this is only the beginning.
As construction progresses and new programs, events, academies, and opportunities continue being announced, we invite you to become part of the journey.
Explore the various Apex academies to learn more about our programs, pathways, and future opportunities, or join our mailing list to remain updated.
The climb has only just begun.