Anon NGA rant

DON'T LURK... Join The Discussion!

Members see FEWER ads

A

Anonymous (979c)

HI all - I did a search and found little about NGA so apologies if this has been discussed.

Our gym does both NGA and USAG meets. I do not know how common this is, but it's really silly IMO. We do one NGA meet to ensure the girls qualify for states/regionals/nationals (NGA does meets for all levels, DP/Xcel up to Nationals). The rest of our meets are USAG.

Anyway, the NGA meets are just a joke. A complete waste of time! It's like a bunch of amateurs running the meet - scoring errors, very little diversity in terms of number of teams...but the thing that bothers me the most is that both of our NGA meets this year, including the state meet, included "surprise requirements" that our girls didn't know or practice. In both cases, our coaches tried to reason with the judges about the requirements and in both cases the judges wouldn't hear it. So, some of our girls don't even get the 10.0 SV.

We (majority of parents) tried talking to our HC last year about not doing NGA again but it fell on deaf ears. We have another parent meeting this week and all of us want to bring it up again. Why would our gym be so adamant about being part of this? It's really frustrating! I don't know that I would leave the gym for just this reason but I do not want to participate in anything NGA. Help!
 
I have to say that I can't really comment as I haven't actually taken any athletes to an NGA meet.

Anyone else competing NGA?
 
I find it hard to believe that they would have a surprise requirement, that would be ridiculous. It is more likely that they were missing a special requirement and if your coaches didn’t know about it they either misinterpreted the manual or didn’t check the differences from USAG and are placing the blame on the judges/association. The fact that it happened at both the competitions leads me to believe that either your coaches didn’t care enough to change the routines after the first time or the gymnasts in question were attempting a skill but didn’t reach the requirement to have it counted.

The complaint about the scoring errors, I can’t comment on but this can happen at any competition and as for the diversity, if there are only x number of clubs following the program in an area you are not going to have more than x number of clubs at the competition, maybe look at it as a better opportunity for your gymnasts to do well if they have less competition.
 
I find it hard to believe that they would have a surprise requirement, that would be ridiculous. It is more likely that they were missing a special requirement and if your coaches didn’t know about it they either misinterpreted the manual or didn’t check the differences from USAG and are placing the blame on the judges/association. The fact that it happened at both the competitions leads me to believe that either your coaches didn’t care enough to change the routines after the first time or the gymnasts in question were attempting a skill but didn’t reach the requirement to have it counted.

The complaint about the scoring errors, I can’t comment on but this can happen at any competition and as for the diversity, if there are only x number of clubs following the program in an area you are not going to have more than x number of clubs at the competition, maybe look at it as a better opportunity for your gymnasts to do well if they have less competition.
Yeah, I have the same thought regarding the coaches (who I love) but it's strange. The most recent "new" requirement was a beam dismount in order to get a 10.0 SV. Yet at the earlier NGA meet this year, not a single girl did this dismount and all started with a 10.0 SV. Maybe the earlier meet was scored incorrectly, I don't know?

All this to say - NGA meets feel very amateurish while being money-grabbing. After 2 years interacting with that body, I can definitely say that it's not been impressive.
 
I’d like to comment on the club doing both NGA and USAG. This has been my question all along. If the point of NGA was to break away from USAG, then why are clubs enrolling in both organizations? If you’re trying to break away from USAG, and cause it’s collapse by having everyone join NCA, then why are you giving your money to USAG? I have also seen gyms that use the exact USAG compulsory routines set to different music. I do not understand this at all. That’s not breaking away.

I also do not understand why NGA took USAG level names, skill names, level structure, bonus structure, and most of the judging structure, and just put an N in front of it? If you’re creating your own organization, at the very least change the level names. Otherwise, it’s just basically the same thing with some tweaking either lower or higher. Also, the way they marketed it as “one set of rules, one set of deductions”? That’s just not true. They have their special requirements, and then they have pages of exceptions or extra skills with very little guidance of split or handstand angles, for example, making is very difficult to interpret. Anyway, that’s my NGA rant, just wanted to add my two cents worth. I feel the original poster’s frustration, because I’ve thought the same things.
 

New Posts

DON'T LURK... Join The Discussion!

Members see FEWER ads

Gymnaverse :: Recent Activity

College Gym News

New Posts

Back