Chester Family Ymca

Awesome Y with great facilities and incredible staff and management. Facilities are well kept and are currently finishing up some incredible renovations which have only added to the facility. Facility offers a fully equipped gym with a range of free weights, machines, cardio machines, and more. In addition to the gym, there’s a great child care program, a vast range of youth athletics teams and programs, tons of group exercise classes, a six-lane 25m chlorine lap pool. Locker rooms are great, there’s currently a male and female locker room several family or individual changing rooms. This Y is fantastic and I can’t wait to see wait the the remaining renovations will bring.

YMCA for more than 10 years, and it truly feels like family. The instructors and staff are friendly, motivating, and incredibly knowledgeable, and the programs are engaging and effective. The convenient location makes it easy to stay consistent, and the positive energy keeps me coming back. I’m grateful for this amazing community!

The staff was very helpful to me when I registered with the Y. A friend of mine put the bug in my ear for at least a year to join it would help me in the long run to get toned up, so I finally did it and it’s been worth a million. It’s helped me very much with my health issues. Also meeting a lot of old Chester friends , Vepco retirees , coaches in both baseball football basketball. The facility is clean, I know it’s going through renovation, but overall its the best move I made in my retirement life.

I will say that, in terms of the gym itself and their facility, it's a pretty nice place. The pool is always clean, there's usually an adequate amount of available equipment to use, and the staff are generally friendly. My 2-star review is more specifically related to their youth sports. While my child's experience with their swimming classes has always been stellar (great instructors), our soccer experience was totally different. Coaches are volunteers are typically parents of kids on the team. This past season, we had an issue with the coaches assigning certain kids as substitute players-- meaning that the only play time they got was when another player needed to rest, etc. NOT what a pay-to-play league like the YMCA is supposed to be. All players are supposed to be allowed equal field time. So after several games of seeing my kid and the same other 2 kids sitting in the grass along the sidelines, picking through blades of grass, bored out of their minds, I spoke out for them -- first to the coaches (who wouldn't even respond to me) and then to the youth sports director at this branch. I received a reply back that they would address the issue with the coaches. For the next 2 games that followed, the issue appeared to be resolved. My daughter and the other 2 "substitute" kids were actually given play time. And then the very next game, the coaches were back to their usual method of keeping these same kids out. Mind you, none of these substitute were their own kids. This time I actually took time stamped photos of these kids on the sidelines. It was less than 7 minutes of field time that my daughter spent on the field. I sent yet another message to the YMCA along with these photos. All I received back was a message saying that they were sorry we had this experience and that if we have issues with any coaches in the future, that we should jump in and "assist" them & that they hope we'll register for other leagues in the future. LOL-- complete refusal for even a partial refund (the non-member rate for these leagues is around $120, btw) even though I'd already brought this issue to their attention previously. So, no, YMCA... we will NOT be signing up for any more of your poorly managed leagues. And to make matters worse, they apparently had YMCA reps there at all the games specifically looking out of the very issue we were experiencing -- that did literally absolutely nothing at all to stand up for and look out for those kids.

My children and my entire family have lived in Chester. After about 8 years of attending this gym my children are being harassed and we have recorded an incident in which the police were threatened after asking a question. Discrimination and harassment are definitely a problem with this facility.