Hornet's Nest to continue after split

In Netawaka, the Hornet’s Nest Sports Club opened its doors to the public less than two years ago as the realization of a goal set by Dr. Mike and Julie Keehn and others to provide a wealth of sports and fitness options for residents in northern Jackson County and the surrounding area.

But in recent months, the Keehns have found themselves working to establish a new fitness facility utilizing exercise and weight equipment that had previously been available at the Hornet’s Nest through its partnership with the Keehns’ Legacy Fitness organization.

Today, that organization has a new name and a new home in Holton, while the Hornet’s Nest plans to keep on serving the area. For Julie Keehn, who served as the Hornet’s Nest project manager in its formative years, it was a tough decision to stop being involved with the facility in Netawaka, but financially, it was a necessary one.

“You can’t just go all in on something like that and not leave your heart there. It’s impossible,” said Keehn, who opened the new Rhino Fitness facility on Saturday at Ninth Street and Vermont Avenue in the former Jackson County Health Department building in Holton.

Despite the split between Legacy Fitness — now named Rhino Fitness, after the fact that the Alamo Group manufactured Rhino mowers in the area, Keehn said — and the Hornet’s Nest, Keehn says that as far as she’s concerned, there are no sour grapes between the two organizations.

“They had a lot of really good ideas and neat things that could happen. Our main goal is that the facility should run for the good of the people in the community,” she said. “We want nothing but the best for that facility.”

Dave Williams, president of the Hornet’s Nest board of directors, agrees.

“That’s our plan, for sure, to stay open,” Williams said of the facility located at 233 White Way in Netawaka. “We’re moving forward as a non-profit entity, and we think it will work better that way. We’re still putting things together.”

Plans to open the Hornet’s Nest as a multiple-option fitness facility began in 2010 with the Keehns spearheading fund-raising efforts to get the 30,000-square-foot facility open. A donation of $5 million from Netawaka native Roberta Zwonitzer Reiman and husband Roy sped up those efforts, and in the fall of 2013, the Hornet’s Nest opened its doors.

Legacy Fitness’ operations inside the Hornet’s Nest provided its members with a variety of exercise and weight training equipment, and the facility also features a gymnasium and indoor pool. But in May, the Keehns announced that they and the Hornet’s Nest would be parting ways, and Legacy Fitness would be looking for a new home.

The split, Keehn said, focused on the operation of a for-profit entity within a not-for-profit entity.

“We wanted the Hornet’s Nest facility to be non-profit,” she said. “But in all of our research, we had discovered that you couldn’t really run that massive of a facility in that small of a town under just one entity. A non-profit couldn’t do it by itself because of different laws about fitness center memberships and things like that.”

Keehn said that while the cost of the facility itself was covered by the Reimans’ financial gift, there was still the matter of covering business and utility costs, aggravated by expenses related to the pool’s operation and the Keehns’ personal financial investment in the fitness equipment. 

“They just wanted to go in a different direction,” she said. “It was a direction where Mike and I weren’t going to be able to recoup our investment.”

Williams agreed that there was a “conflict of interest” that broke the bond.

“She was wanting to do different things than we were,” he said. “That’s all.”

The only move left for the Keehns, Julie said, was to “walk away and allow the board to run the facility the way they wanted to,” and she added that the Keehns “want nothing but the best for that facility.” After all, she said, her family was instrumental in getting the ball rolling on the Hornet’s Nest, and the goals that went into the plans for that facility are still there.

“Some people have told me that they’re crushed because they think they have to stop their membership,” Keehn said. “But what I want them to know is that for me, if you stop using that facility, a facility that my family was instrumental in making happen there, then that’s going to be a disloyalty to me and my family. The only thing that’s moved to Holton is the fitness center.”

Last week, fitness equipment that had previously been available to Hornet’s Nest members was packed up and moved to the new Rhino Fitness facility, which opened to the public on Saturday. Meanwhile, new fitness and weight training equipment has been acquired for the Hornet’s Nest facility, and Williams said most of that equipment is now in place.

“We’ve got some new elliptical machines coming, possibly in the next few days,” Williams said.

At the Hornet’s Nest, plans are for fitness classes to continue as normal. Michele Rakestraw, who had previously been serving as the facility’s gymnastics program director, is now the facility director, effective today, it was reported.

Meanwhile, at Rhino Fitness, Keehn said fitness services and training will continue to be conducted by the same certified personal trainers and instructors who had been working for Legacy Fitness at the Hornet’s Nest. The only things the new facility won’t have, she noted, were the gym and the pool — and she said she will continue to utilize those Hornet’s Nest facilities.

“I’m still going to take my kids and pay the day pass to go swimming there or use the basketball court,” she said. “I hope they continue to put into that facility, so that everything that we all envisioned will still happened.”

She also noted that the Keehns, who continue to operate the Muddy Creek Family Clinic in Netawaka just across the road from the Hornet’s Nest facility, have no plans to leave town.

“We put that clinic there because Netawaka was, and always will be, my husband’s home town,” she said. “We fought really hard to stay with the Hornet’s Nest, because we have so many years of putting into that facility. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to leave our home town, we’re going to leave the church, or we’re going to leave the city. It’s not like that for us.”

For more information on the Hornet’s Nest, call (785) 933-2616. For more information on Rhino Fitness, call 362-2060 or visit www.rhino-fitnessks.com