Competition Update

The time has come for the head coach to decide whether or not the girls are ready to compete---I spoke with him yesterday and his current opinion is that they may not be ready to compete until the spring. Over the next two weeks, he'll be watching carefully before making a final decision. Kaylie, of course, is very excited about competing in the upcoming Preliminary events--followed by Sectionals in late October and the State at the end of November. Unfortunately, she hasn't quite mastered her back hand-spring--although her coach has told her she's almost there. Many of the level 4 girls have been gone most of the summer, so it's unclear at this point if they will be in shape to compete, even if they know the routines.

So we'll keep our fingers crossed that Kaylie is deemed ready, and gets the opportunity to compete this season. I'm hopeful for her, but at the same time very appreciative that her head coach is looking out for these girls. Safety is always a primary concern, and I definitely think it's important for the girls to feel good about how they do in competition. But at the same time, the fastest way to motivate Kaylie, is to tell her she's not ready! She's already asking if she could get a private lesson to try to master those final skills. I think the issue of team leotard's may come into play as well, although this is just a guess on my part. I know the the team leotard is a custom order--basically they order a ready made design, in the gym's colors. This custom fee is divided amongst all of the team members of a particular level. For example, the level 5 girls split that cost 3 ways, since there are 3 girls on the level 5 team. I think it would be challenging for the head coach to tell families, ok, it's time for you to buy the team leotard, but you won't be competing for several months, in order for one or two girls to have the leo to compete now. I can just imagine that would be difficult. Of course, the flip side to that is it's not entirely fair to any individual girl who might be ready to compete now. And I'm sure that there would be some girls/parents absolutely convinced that they are, in fact, ready now. (Kaylie being one of those girls--and me sort of being one of those parents--although I won't be pushing it, as I absolutely defer to the coach's knowledge and experience.) A potentially tricky situation, which I'm glad I'm not in!


A little info on the gymnastics "season". I've gleaned this from reading various internet sites, and talking to other gym moms. Apparently, there is a competitive season for each level of gymnast---levels 4-6 compete at the preliminary level in September and early October, followed by the Sectionals with finals in November. In order to get to sectionals, they have to achieve a combined score of 30.00 at the preliminary event, and then achieve a combined score of 32.00 at sectionals to qualify for the state event. A combined score is the total of all scores from each event--40.00 being the maximum score, if you got perfect 10's on each event. Usually it works out In the spring, competitions for those levels are more invitational in nature, meaning they are for experience, not state ranking. Also, I believe there are "testing" competitions, which allow gymnasts to move up to the next level for the following competition season. Higher level gymnasts have their season in the spring, starting in April. Every state potentially has their own variation on this, but I think it's reasonably the same across the board. Also, the lower levels only compete thru the state levels. The higher level gymnasts then can move up from state competitions to regional and national events if they have qualifying scores. It's surprising how tricky it is to come by this information--maybe someday I'll write a guide book for parents of new gymnasts!