MAG DS almost took out a rec kid last night

[jenjean70]

I got to see the tail end of practice last night when I went to pick DS up and I got to see some floor. He was working on his double back onto a mat on the floor. In the middle of his double back I hear the coach yell "STOP!" After DS landed I see the coach talking to the rec coach about "being this close". I was focused on my son so I didn't notice the little girl run directly under him as he was flipping. That could have been a major disaster! Luckily he didn't see her while he was flipping or he might have kicked out and landed on his head.
Anyone else have a near disaster or crash with the rec kids?

 

[Jard.the.gymnast]

Luckily that will never happen, rec trains at different places than team. However when me and my teammates first came from rec we didn't know we were supposed to walk across the floor. No accidents luckily.

That must have freaked him out...

 

[skschlag]

Nope. D has had to direct some of the younger boys on where to stand when he does pommel/hb because they are not used to having someone his size/level. But other than that, the coaches/students are very good about staying out of the way.

 

[jenjean70]

Nope. D has had to direct some of the younger boys on where to stand when he does pommel/hb because they are not used to having someone his size/level. But other than that, the coaches/students are very good about staying out of the way.

We've had issues with rec kids a few times. The squirrely ones who go to jump on the tumble track in front of the gymnast about to do a pass pr the ones who run in front of the gymnast starting a vault. Usually it's at the beginning of a pass not at the tail end.

 

[jenjean70]

Luckily that will never happen, rec trains at different places than team. However when me and my teammates first came from rec we didn't know we were supposed to walk across the floor. No accidents luckily.

That must have freaked him out...

Luckily he was totally unaware until afterwards so he didn't get freaked out. (thank goodness!)

 

[M2Abi]

At both gyms I've been at, it is continuously stressed to all kids, rec and team, that you do not run across the floor, you watch where you're going and go around. I don't think it prevents all accidents. but anytime someone runs across the floor, whether there is someone there or not, there are consequences.

 

[jenjean70]

At both gyms I've been at, it is continuously stressed to all kids, rec and team, that you do not run across the floor, you watch where you're going and go around. I don't think it prevents all accidents. but anytime someone runs across the floor, whether there is someone there or not, there are consequences.

Oh yes. They stress that too. Sometimes the kids get excited and don't pay attention and run over before the coach can do anything about it. It's few and far between but it happens sometimes.

 

[raenndrops]

I got to see the tail end of practice last night when I went to pick DS up and I got to see some floor. He was working on his double back onto a mat on the floor. In the middle of his double back I hear the coach yell "STOP!" After DS landed I see the coach talking to the rec coach about "being this close". I was focused on my son so I didn't notice the little girl run directly under him as he was flipping. That could have been a major disaster! Luckily he didn't see her while he was flipping or he might have kicked out and landed on his head.
Anyone else have a near disaster or crash with the rec kids?

Plenty of near misses when we were in the old building (had 3/4 of a gym and team and rec were all there at once).
Since we moved to the new building with rec mostly upstairs, the misses were few and far between.
Now, we lost our upstairs area and we have had 2-3 in the past week. We now have team gymnasts "blocking" for other girls.

 

[amiandjim]

Yikes! Luckily our rec kids work out on completely separate equipment than the team kids.

 

[RDTmom]

My middle one is a rec kid who almost got ran over. His group was doing some obstacle course parallel and right next to the vault. The older boys were practicing there and he turned left to go back instead of right and was right in the way. The boys tried to talk to him and he just started bawling. It was the saddest thing. Thankfully, no one got hurt and he knows to watch more carefully which direction he goes. His big brother was on the other end and so wasn’t able to help.

 

[Madden3]

^Aw, poor little guy!

Yes. I will preface this by saying overall, I think our gym is very safe with tons of solid safety practices in place. But it is a very large gym with lots going on, and we have been there a long time. So over the years we have seen some things!

Memorably, there was almost a very serious crash when a very young team kid suddenly stepped out of a viewing group and absentmindedly stood exactly where an older optional was supposed to land, as he was doing a big Pbar dismount. The optional saved it with some quick thinking. I was not there, but my kids told me it was super scary. This was an unusual situation, not a regular practice. So everyone was a little off I guess.

Where I get freaked out is when they are alternating tumbling passes. Sometimes team boys and team girls alternate at the same time, and that worries me because the boys have no idea what the girl is going to do and vice versa. I just feel like they do not communicate as well as they would within their own team, if that makes sense. But so far, the only "crash" I have heard of was one where a girl "accidentally" stumbled into a boy she seemed to like. So....

Over the years I have occasionally seen little toddlers wander out onto the floor while their parents are not looking. That scares the s out of me.

The worst was several years ago when the gym was renting space to some kind of martial arts class with huge stick like weapons (!) for kids of about 7-12 and that space happened to be basically the same space the MAG team trained in. Those kids simply could not learn to stay away from the gymnasts and off the gym equipment. Thankfully the gym stopped doing that.

Also older Ds just told me he once almost landed on an errant rec kid while doing Pbar dismount.

Gyms are dangerous places. I am surprised collisions do not happen more often.

 

[2G1B]

I have seen two with my kids. First was at a former gym. DD was doing a private for floor and as she went and did a RO double BHS a coach's toddler ran across the floor right into DD's path. DD DID see the toddler and if she hadn't come out of the tumbling she would have absolutely hurt the toddler. Unfortunately DD did get a little hurt herself when she saw what was happening while in the air and maneuvered to avoid the toddler. She also got totally freaked out. I was more than a little pissed about the coach letting her toddler run around the gym like that. Fortunately DD was only a little hurt (I think she landed on her shoulder or something and had some rug burn... it was years ago and I am surprised to say that I don't remember all of the details) and she got over being freaked out; but to this day is very cautious if there are toddlers around the gym anywhere near her.

DS had a little less of an issue; but it was annoying and somewhat dangerous. The gym let a birthday party start before the boys' team was done practicing. These kids were told to stay to the other side of the gym and not come over into the boys' area at all until their practice was over. DS was doing PBars when a pre-school aged kid ran over and jumped onto the spring board. DS had just started a routine and was swinging back and barely missed smacking this kid in the head with his feet. It was annoying to me because that kid and another had kept going over there and the parents would barely chastise them, "hey, we shouldn't be over here"; but wouldn't follow through. DS's coach saw this happen and yelled at the coach in charge of the party that those kids could NOT be on their side at that time.

 

[profmom]

This thread makes me very happy about our gym's setup. The youngest rec kids are in a separate gym upstairs. Somewhat older rec classes do some tumbling downstairs in the boys' area, but the tumbling area is in the middle and the horse area and pbars area are on the sides. There's also an area with low bars set up for strap bar, casting, and strength work, and the only times I've seen any close calls was with that. It's pretty close to the pbars area. But both areas are small enough that the coach is right there.

I think a gym has to be set up to prevent these kinds of things from happening, and coaches have to be on top of it (athletes too!). People who don't know much about gymnastics, including little kids and inexperienced parents, really do not understand the physics of the sport and the kind of velocity that those bodies achieve when they are swinging and tumbling. If someone wanders into a dangerous area (which really only happens with team kids because of the gym setup), the coaches tear the kid a new one.

 

[sce]

The only near misses I have witnessed at our current gym ya kids (even other team
Boys) walking between the pommel horses when a big guys is going. At this gym rev kids are in the other side of the building. But younger team boys and a few kids of coaches are around.

At our previous gym we had a few issues as preschoocjasses finished after developmental and preteam classes had already started. Dd almost tumbled onto a few littles who ran across the floor at the end of their class. Thecoaches joed in this to
Prevent it from happening again. Ds nearly hurt a teammate a few times though. The kid would stand too close to the end of the PBars and Ds swinging down nearly killed caked him. The kid was 10yo! We also had team girls walk across a landing area while boys were tumbling. These are older, teammkids who should know better. Most of the rev kids atbthatbgym were closely supervised by their teachers, had to walk in a line etc, to avoid issues like this.

 

[l.c.o]

Yikes! Glad all is ok.

Thankfully, I don’t think rec would never share a floor with team kids in their gym. BUT this is reason #1 the kids don’t go to open gym!

DS often asks to go, but too many kids get hurt.