Classroom to Weight Room: Sunflower Strength and Conditioning

Sunflower Strength and Conditioning Co-owners

Amanda Rush
Seaman Middle School Couselor

Becky Svaty
Topeka West High School Math Teacher

Robert Laubengayer
USD 501 Secondary ESL Coach

It can be difficult for some people to explain their reason for choosing the job they have. For some, it landed in their lap, while others feel it was what they were born to do.

For Becky Svaty, her husband Roger Laubengayer, and Amanda Rush, teaching is just what they were born to do. Becky teaches math at Topeka West, Roger is a secondary ESL coach for USD 501, and Amanda is one of the counselors at Seaman Middle School.

“For me, it’s who I am,” Roger said of teaching, as the trio sit outside Sunflower Strength and Conditioning (SSC), the gym they also co-own outside of their full- time teaching jobs.

While teaching is their vocation, owning a gym and exercise is their “life insurance.”

“This is us maintaining a lifestyle that we like,” Roger said.

Their gym journeys began back in 2009 when Roger opened CrossFit Topeka, and Becky helped him run it. Amanda joined the gym as an athlete and soon became a coach as well.

Even after they sold the gym in 2014, the three continued to train together in one another’s homes. It wasn’t long before two other couples approached Becky and Roger about opening another gym. They included Amanda in the venture, and Sunflower Strength and Conditioning was born, under the ownership of eight people.

You heard that right. The fitness center has eight business owners, consisting of the three teachers, three active military, and two others who own businesses elsewhere in Topeka.

“We are pretty proud of ourselves that we can take eight different people and put a gym together, and stay together for five years,” Becky said.

“They’re our strength,” she shares, referring to her friends that have quickly become family through the ownership of the gym that included a year-long deployment of one of their fellow co-owners.

While they admit that the gym may have its challenges, all three teachers agree that it is also their time of therapy, self-care and most importantly, community.

“It’s our time to take care of ourselves and really let it all out,” Becky said.

So, what is it like being a teacher by day and a gym owner by night?

On one hand, they agree that coaching and teaching are one in the same. Although, the teachers agree with laughter that adults often don’t listen as well as the kids at school.

On the other hand, they acknowledge that time is tension. The transition from being a teacher to teaching and owning/ operating a gym came with a learning curve.

“For me, it was the time management,” Amanda said. “Juggling owning the business, getting my workouts in, along with coaching and my responsibilities.”

With two kids of her own, Amanda had to learn the balance of managing school life, gym life and home life.

Although coaching others and improving their own fitness brings them an abundance of joy, Amanda, Becky and Roger agree that they never saw Sunflower as a way out of teaching.

“For me it’s the students,” Becky said. “Every day is different.”

“Becky and I have been teaching for over 30 years,” Roger adds.

They have no plans to work in the gym full time. It would be too hard to step away from teaching.