Until I started this site, the word "pit" had two meanings in our house. The first: my wife watches The Pitt and makes sure I am kept fully across the plot, the medicine, and the current assessment of Noah Wyle in scrubs. The second: whatever our daughter had managed to lose in the foam pit at training that week.
PIT Gymnastics, it turns out, is a third thing entirely.
At the 2026 Senior Victorian Championships, PIT Gymnastics sent eight MAG athletes to compete across Level 6, Level 7, and Level 8. Adam Bowman won the Level 8 Open all-around with 66.6 and added individual gold on vault. Jamil Awad, who had won Level 7 at the previous year's championships, stepped up to Level 8 and placed third all-around with 64.5, while also winning vault, parallel bars, and high bar. Liam Duncan placed second at Level 6 with 61.85, landing a full twisting back layout in competition. None of it was unexpected for a club with 29 medals at Level 8 and above in our database, and all of it confirmed that the programme developing in Mill Park continues to produce.
In our last profile, we looked at Y Geelong Gymnastics, a club across the bay with a dominant WAG programme and eleven athletes who have competed at international levels. PIT sits on the other side of the equation: a Metro North club where the men's programme has outgrown the women's, a founding story tied to a university building that no longer carries the same name, and a competition on the calendar that other clubs travel to attend.
The foundation
PIT Gymnastics takes its name literally. In 1979, John Dorrington and Wendy O'Donahue started a gymnastics program at the Preston Institute of Technology (P.I.T.), on what is now the RMIT Bundoora campus. The name came with the building, and it stayed when the building's name changed.
Annette Dorrington joined the programme in 1981 and became a Director, a role she held until 2004. In 1985, the club incorporated and transitioned from recreational classes to a professionally run operation, making it one of the first permanently established multi-use gymnastics facilities in Australia. Through the late 1980s and into the 1990s, PIT operated satellite centres across northern Melbourne, at schools in Coburg, Craigieburn, Diamond Creek, Hurstbridge, Reservoir, Thomastown, and beyond, before the programme outgrew that model.
In 1989, the main club moved from the university campus to a factory on High Street, Epping. By 1994 and 1995, two new fully equipped facilities had been built, one at Research and one at Mill Park. The Research location was sold in 2000 and became an independent club. Mill Park, at 40 Heaths Court, has been the club's home since.
In 2018, Anthony Dorrington, John's son, joined as Director, and the club launched a rebranding initiative around the motto "Ignite The Passion." The club has been recognised as Australian General Gymnastics Club of the Year and is one of a small number of Australian clubs to have competed at every World Gymnaestrada since 1999. Today, approximately 750 gymnasts train there across programs from recreational to elite, supported by more than 30 coaches and assistant coaches.
The MAG programme
Thirty-five MAG athletes appear in our database for PIT, with 264 results across three seasons. That ratio, more men than women, is unusual in the Victorian gymnastics landscape, where most clubs run WAG as the primary operation and MAG as a secondary one. At PIT, the depth sits on the men's side.
We reached out to PIT to ask whether the data reflects a deliberate push to build the MAG programme, or whether it has simply evolved that way. As of publishing, they have not replied, so we are left to let the data do the talking.
The 2025 Senior Victorian Championships captured where the programme had reached. Conor McGillivray won the Junior International all-around in both AA sessions, 75.85 in the first and 72.45 in the second, taking gold each time. Jamil Awad won Level 7 twice (68.95 and 68.75 across two sessions). The Level 7 team took gold with 199.45. The Level 6 team also won gold with 182.75. Winning team gold at Level 6 and Level 7 in the same championship reflects how far the depth extends down the age groups.
The 2026 season continued the pattern. Bowman, who had placed third at Level 7 through multiple seasons before stepping up, won Level 8 convincingly. Awad made the same step from Level 7 champion to Level 8 podium in a single season. Liam Duncan, sixth at Level 6 in 2025, moved to second in 2026. The club's results at the Vics have a consistency that suggests individual development rather than occasional peaks.
Newman Rukweza carried the Level 9 standard in the 2024 season, winning the all-around at both State Trial 1 (74.0) and the Senior Victorian Championships (71.925). His results give the medal count at Level 9 two of its four entries. The total medal tally at Level 8 and above across our data sits at 29, spread across Level 8, Level 9, Level 10, and Junior International. Seven of those are gold at Level 8 alone.
PIT also runs its own annual MAG invitational, drawing clubs from across the Victorian circuit. The PIT Invitational has featured competitors from Melbourne Acrobatic Gymnastics Academy (MAGA), Reach Gymnastics, Gymnastics Unlimited, Essendon Keilor Gym Academy, Balance Gymnastics, Wyndham City Gymnastics, and others — a consistent draw that has made it a fixture on the Victorian MAG calendar.