Top Dog All-Stars Cheer & Tumbling

Tucked into a business park just off Starkey Road, Top Dog All-Stars Cheer & Tumbling has been coaching Pinellas County kids through back handsprings, stunt sequences, and competition routines since 2000. Rick and Terri Abasial opened the gym with a simple premise: competitive cheerleading is a good vehicle for teaching young athletes discipline, teamwork, and confidence, and a quarter century later the family still runs the day to day operation themselves rather than handing it off to a management company.

The Largo facility is the original home base for what grew into a two-location operation, with a sister gym now open in Bradenton. That growth happened slowly and locally, built on word of mouth among Pinellas families rather than a franchise rollout, which is part of why the gym still feels like a neighborhood fixture instead of a chain storefront. Inside, the space is set up for both recreational tumbling classes and full all-star cheer squads that travel to regional and national competitions throughout the season.

Programs run across a wide age range, starting with tumbling and mini cheer classes for the youngest kids and building up through competitive teams for school-age athletes and teens. New athletes typically start with an evaluation or tryout so coaches can place them on a team or in a class level that matches their current skill, whether that means a beginner tumbling track or a spot on one of the traveling squads. The gym also runs camps and clinics during school breaks and summer, which tend to fill up with both current team members and kids trying the sport for the first time.

What sets a gym like this apart from a big-box gymnastics chain is the continuity of coaching. Families who have been through the program for multiple seasons often mention that the same coaches stick around year after year, which matters in a sport where trust between a flyer and her base, or between an athlete and the coach spotting a new skill, is not something that develops overnight. That kind of staff stability is easier for an owner-operated gym to maintain than for a corporate-owned location that cycles through management.

Parents new to competitive cheer should know that this is a serious athletic commitment once a child moves onto a competition team, with practice schedules that intensify as competition season approaches in the fall and winter. For families just looking for an activity that builds strength, flexibility, and coordination without the travel schedule, the recreational tumbling classes are the better entry point, and staff can talk through which track makes sense for a particular kid’s age and goals.

The Largo location sits inside a suite in a Starkey Road commercial building, so it is easy to miss from the street if you are not looking for the signage. Anyone considering enrollment is better off calling ahead to confirm current class times and tuition rates, since schedules shift between the school year and summer session. Two and a half decades in, Top Dog remains one of the few independently owned cheer and tumbling gyms of its size still operating in Pinellas County under its original ownership.