On July 14th, 2025, the Legacy Athletics community in Westfield, IN, was devastated to learn that their owner was selling the gym.
Although the gym would continue under new ownership, the community treasured what they had built together and didn’t want to lose it.
- “Our crew is made up of mostly masters athletes. We just want to lift, sweat, and have fun together,” Monica Hilton, one of the members, told the Morning Chalk Up, adding that they also loved their programming, which is focused on longevity over performance.
The new gym, on the other hand, was a younger, more competitive crew.
- “We just knew it was going to be a case of two different cultures, and we felt stuck,” Hilton explained, a former 10-year gym owner of Together We Rise CrossFit in Indianapolis, IN.
Their solution: Hilton and 39 other members decided to open their own gym, but in an unusual way. They decided to form a co-op.
They quickly found “the most perfect warehouse space we could ever have dreamed of,” Hilton said. As luck would have it, they next stumbled across a local gym that was selling all of its equipment.
Then, they calculated their expenses – start-up costs and monthly expenses – and divided them by 40.
That’s the amount each of them agreed to pay every month. (Hilton is the official owner of the gym, but all 40 co-op members are responsible for covering the gym’s monthly costs, as well as its operations, such as cleaning, maintenance, event planning, supplies, and new equipment.)
- “And any extra funds from new memberships, FITAID sales, merchandise, etc, go towards the gym’s reserve fund,” Hilton explained.
On August 18th, just four weeks after learning that their gym owner was selling the gym, Hilton and the other co-op members opened Send It Athletics in Westfield, IN.
Since then, Send It Athletics has been offering 16 classes a week, coached by eight volunteers who have agreed to continue until the gym expands to a point where they can be compensated.
Hilton couldn’t be happier with how things are going so far.
- “It’s hard to believe that this all happened within the last 90 days, but it has brought our community together in a way I never thought possible for a gym,” she said.
She added, “It just shows the power of community.”
