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Kristen Alm of Massapequa plants her foot as she wall...

Kristen Alm of Massapequa plants her foot as she wall flips. Lane Clark spots for her at Five-Star in East Rockaway. (February 5, 2010) Credit: Photo by David Pokress

At first, second and third glance, the assemblage of males over at Five-Star Sports and Entertainment late one Friday night fulfill most of the stereotypes filed under "Guys You Would Not Want Your Daughter to Date."

That fourth glance, though - that's the one that makes the difference.

There's the kid with the orange mohawk, the dizzying array of tattoos, and the well-toned arms attached to guys who call themselves Lazer and Crash.

To borrow a phrase, these gentlemen are not your father's gymnasts.

They fly over obstacles, catapult over walls and know how to scale fences like an edgier Spiderman (but without the spandex, thanks).

The athletes, about 60 or so of them on that night, have plied their trade on street corners and alleyways, but for the female high school gymnasts who call Five-Star in East Rockaway their home base, they're slowly becoming peers, sometimes teachers and ultimately, competition.

"These are rough looking guys," said Lane Clark, one of the gym's directors. "[The environment] is really brand new to them and we've been integrating them."

The urban stuntwork is called parkour and gradually is claiming its corner of the extreme sports pantheon. What the gym has done, though, is introduce it to its talented ranks of regimented club gymnasts - girls from top-ranked teams like Oceanside and CHSAA champion Kellenberg. Instead of concrete, they practice on padded walls and obstacles. Getting backed by insurance companies has been tricky, said Leon Williams, the club's owner. All the stuntmen sign waivers before participating.

"The first time I saw it, it was like, uh, this is intense," said Oceanside's Brianna Grimaldi, who now coaches part-time at the gym. "They're just crazy and I guess it makes you want to do more and it's like, this is awesome."

Teammate Briana Kay has embraced the new company with aplomb. Once a week, Five-Star invites the parkour athletes to practice and showcase their skills. The event costs about $10 dollars per person, said Clark, "but we'll never turn someone away for money."

Recently, Kay has taken to trying a back tuck off a padded wall in the gym - it's a trick some of the parkour athletes have perfected off the sides of buildings. She flips over, first with Clark spotting and then without. Her audience of boys applaud politely (with a few hollers tossed in).

In turn, the stuntmen gape in awe when one of the gymnasts manages a giant - a swing with a 360 rotation around the high uneven bar. The murmuring starts right away, "Oh, I hate giants," says Mike "Lazer" Axelman, 18, who took up parkour at a young age and perfected his skills preforming stunts around the hilly Israeli landscape. "You learn a lot of body awareness from the gymnasts, but giants, those are so scary."

The integration has been surprisingly seamless, said Clark, and the two diverse groups have made the best of their similarities. The impromptu teaching sessions sometimes give way to playful one-upsmanship. The gymnasts tend to let go to their ingrained rigidity, while the stuntmen embrace a performers sense of poise.

"You've never really seen a girl doing this stuff," said Michael Turner, a performer from Santa Barbara who's slotted to begin a parkour TV show with MTV later this year. "[The gymnasts] have this rigid set of rules and you have to apply them to concrete and they need to break that mentality if they want to do it. Meanwhile, they taught us form, technique and discipline."

The sessions, which began in early January, can sometimes go as late as 1-1:30 a.m.

On this day, though, they pack up early. A small group of parkour athletes and gymnasts are set to do a demo into the early hours of the morning. It's a good diversion on a Friday night when teens could be doing more unsavory things, Clark says.

He smiles cheekily.

"It's at Hooters."

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