WAG Age group question

[dynamicduo]

Hi everyone! My DDs have been competing for 3 years now and this is their first year as optional gymnasts. In all of the meets they've attended in the past the age groups seem pretty even. Say, 14 girls in child, junior a/b and senior a/b. Not necessarily those exact breakdowns, but each age groups seems to be within 3 girls of each other. Even at state meets they seems to be evenly matched up.

This past weekend they had a meet and the breakdown looked like this:
Child = 5
Jr A= 24
Jr B= 13
Senior= 13

Is this normal for one age group to be SO much bigger then the rest? Our first few optional meets have not looked like this one, so, is this normal for optional meets and we just have to get used to it? Just curious!

 

[Clover]

Were there multiple sessions of the same level? If so, more than likely the age groups were broken out evenly for the entire meet for that level. You may have just been in a session with a lot of Jr A and not very many children. Someone else probably was in a session with lots of children and hardly any Jr As. I don't think the large meets do the age breakdown by session but rather by level.

 

[cbifoja]

Some meets seem to lock themselves in to age categories, numbers be damned. My DD won all events and aa at a compulsory meet because she was the only 9YO L6. I have no idea why they didn't just make the youngest age group 10 and under but to her, it was very embarrassing.

 

[Quadqueen]

I've never seen that happen.

 

[cbifoja]

Well I can show you the score sheet. She "won" floor with a 7.75. Lol

 

[MILgymFAM]

We have seen tiny age divisions in meets with big age divisions, and have definitely seen age groups of one. Always thought it was silly too.

 

[Quadqueen]

I didn't mean I didn't believe you, cbifoja . Hope your DD could find the humor in it later!!

 

[lhmom]

At Circle of Stars, they also had it by ages (10 and under, 11, 12, 13 and 14+). The 10 and 11 age group was small (8-9 girls in one, 6 in another). The bigger groups were the 13 and 14 year olds (22+ girls in each group). It was very surprising to us because they usually try to divide the groups evenly.

 

[cbifoja]

I didn't mean I didn't believe you, cbifoja . Hope your DD could find the humor in it later!!

Oh I know!!!! I didn't mean for it to come across like I was offended or something. I can find the humor in it now but she still just rolls her eyes when the subject comes up. I mean how often do you win FLOOR after forgetting part of your routine and leaving out a required element! LOL

 

[MeetDirector]

I will be brutally honest - it was a lazy meet director. It takes a little effort and time to divide things up evenly in each session and program the scoring software correctly.

 

[raenndrops]

We usually have age groups in our meets that are the AGES... or in Optionals, it will be 12 & Under, 13 & Over (or 12 & U, 13, 14 & O) depending on the numbers of girls... Most of the time, it is broken up this way. It CAN result in uneven age groups ... especially if there are a lot of scratches AFTER the age groups are set.

 

[suebee]

Dd had this happen for the first time this year as well. Most of her meets have the age groups divided to make each group relatively even, but she had one meet this year that they did it by age at states. The youngest and the oldest age groups had 4 kids each and the 2 middle age groups had around 24 girls each in them. Seemed just a little crazy!

 

[GymRatMama]

We were at a meet where there were so many 10yo that they divided the group into 10jr and 10sr. There were still over 20 girls in each group.

 

[gymnastics*]

I recently had a meet where a girl got 3rd all around with an 18.85. Her age group had 3 people, while the next group had 15+ gymnasts in it.

 

[skschlag]

LOL> Boys are always crazy like this. There were like 175 level 8 gymnasts. 3 age groups. There were like 50 11 yo, 75 12 yo and 50 13+. We are so used to really big, uneven age groups!

 

[dynamicduo]

Thanks for all the responses!! Guess we should be lucky this is the first time we had to deal with the uneven numbers!! Yikes to the boys numbers!! Is go up against 24 over 74 any day!! Lol

 

[samsmama]

LOL> Boys are always crazy like this. There were like 175 level 8 gymnasts. 3 age groups. There were like 50 11 yo, 75 12 yo and 50 13+. We are so used to really big, uneven age groups!

Yes, that. My DS has had more than 40 boys in his age group this season. The worst was 66! The breakdown was roughly 13 6-year-olds, 66 7-8, 30 9-10, and 10 11+.

 

[Paint A Melody]

In my team one of the girls won bars with a scratch, because she was the only one in her level. She also competed skills that I don't think all reached the requirements, but also got first on those.

 

[beachgirl]

We had a meet in the fall where for L4 it was broken down age 7/8 with 5 girls, age 9-11 over 50 girls, age 12+ 10 girls. If they had made it 7-9 and 10/11 those age would have been balanced perfectly. It was the only L4 session at the meet, so they weren't trying to make all of the sessions L4 age groupings the same. We are going to an invitational there in a couple of weeks, so it will be interesting to see if they do the same thing for L5.

 

[Iwannabemargo]

we have this quite often, especially locally in the lower levels there may be 2 or 3 girls entered in the age group. I smile when I see parents plastering "County Champion" all over facebook about their child when I know that they were the only person ion their age group.