Bogwoppit, I talked to the coach immediately after the last incident. I told her that I felt punishing my dd for the same offence seems excessive. She told me that she only punished her once. She said the doubling of her holds during conditioning is because she is weak there and needs to strengthen. She said it would improve her bars and beam skills. I told her my dd would be fine doing more conditioning if she thought the extra work assignment was coming from a loving place. The coach said, of course. I told her my dd sees it as punishment and asked the coach to explain the extra conditioning is because she just wants her to be a better gymnast. The coach said, “I think she can work through this”. I repeated myself about four more times before she quit saying she can work through this and agreed to talk to her. I feel like she just wanted to get me to leave her alone.
Valentin, leaving for another program would be a huge financial hardship. We are involved in a city program and the private gyms are about 4 times more expensive. There is another gym that has worked with my dd during camps and has tried to recruit her. There owner watches her at meets much closer than her own coaches do. I only realized this when I was reviewing a video and saw him walking back and forth on the floor to follow her entire routine. He says he does not agree with the coaching philosophy of our gym. He believes they hold the girls back. Last spring break he said that she should be getting ready for level 7.
As it turned out she repeated level 4 while able to do all her level 5 skills. This is because they made the decision of levels while she was in a boot with her injury. They said she was an unknown. We expressed concern to the head coach, but were told, "Should the coaching staff feel that it has made an error, we will try to adjust for it." When she had recovered well and could do all the routines okay I asked a coach if she thought they made a mistake. She just said that my dd was in a good place and would score better as a level 4.
I guess my point is that talking to the head coach has accomplished nothing in the past. I have felt that it has actually hurt my dd’s standing in the gym. He does not care if the girls leave. When we did not like that she was being forced to repeat level 4, he said that if we feel too strongly about this we might want to check into other programs in town. When a teammate was struggling with the extreme conditioning demands, he told the girl’s mother that the other programs in town do not require so much conditioning. The girls are often reminded that there are 1800 girls in the rec. program that would happily take their spot. The coach that is conflicting with my dd is one of the senior coaches. We are experiencing a coaching shortage already. I do not think anything will be done, except it will get back to her that we complained and she will be even harder on my dd.
I think this is part of dd’s problem with this coach right now. After dd came out of the boot, I asked this coach to do a private lesson with my dd so she could learn the bar routine. She declined to do the private lesson. She did not want to push dd to fast after the injury. She said that dd has all the level 5 bar skills and will have no problem putting it together in the routine. We passed this information on to the head coach, along with what all the other coaches told us. After that the coach always yells at dd more than anyone else. She does not let her do anything other than a kip. She lets girls with no kip jump to the high bar. She tells us that when dd’s kip is better she will let her jump to the high bar, but right now she does not want her to fall. However, when she is out for the day and dd gets another coach, she does the entire routine with no trouble.
Thank you for the feedback. The program does have a lot of good warm coaches that my dd holds in high regard, the facility is great, and my dd loves her teammates. I think this coach has a lot to offer, I just think she needs to take some child development classes. I do not think she understands how much she is hurting these girls. (I might talk to the program director in general about the coaches needing more training in child development.) My dd said she will go to practice today. We agreed to start documenting her problems with her coach.