TO COMPETE OR NOT COMPETE... missing skills

[nevertooold]

If your team is competing in USA Gymnastics sanctioned events then your athletes and parents will have previously signed and will sign again this year an athlete membership form which you or another representative at you gym will also sign.

Here is what the form states in part:

In consideration of my membership in the United States Gymnastics Federation (USA Gymnastics), and my participation in USA Gymnastics sanctioned events, I agree to be bound by each of the following:
1. Readiness to Compete: I will only participate in those USA Gymnastics competitions for which I believe I am physically and psychologically prepared to compete. Prior to participation in USA Gymnastics events, I will have practiced my exercises, and will perform only those exercises which I have accomplished to the degree of confidence necessary to assure I can perform them by myself, without injury.

That is in the section that the athlete signs off on.

Then the section where the gym rep signs it says:

Club Representative Signature — I have checked this form and verify that all sections have been successfully completed and to the best of my knowledge are correct. I understand that failure to complete any section will result in delayed processing of this form. I have a copy, or original (if processed online), of this form on file at my club.

So if in fact you compete sanctioned meets I would simply present the form to the parents and gymnast and say, "please tell me if you feel it would be honest for you to sign this form stating that you have practiced all your exercises and can perform them BY YOURSELF without injury, when in fact you cannot do your robhsbt by yourself much less at the end of a very tiring routine. Or are you in fact asking me to also lie by stating that I believe everything on this form to be true and accurate when in fact I do not."

I would probably keep going with something like this. "I am truly sorry that you feel you are ready to compete Level 6. I really do not understand how this miscommunication has come about, and I apologize if I misled you to believe that you were ready to compete Level 6. You are not. I'm glad that you want to, and I'm excited to keep working those skills with you. You will get there, but you are not there now, and wanting it doesn't make it so. Only working hard, coming to practice regularly, doing all your conditioning and training will make it so. I know that it is not what you want to hear. It doesn't mean I don't like you, that you aren't a good gymnast, that I don't believe in you, or anything else, it just means you aren't ready YET."

You may have to just let her not compete this year since you don't really have a policy against it. It would be better to change policy at the end of the season so parents/gymnasts will know what to expect if they choose to continue on team the following year.

 

[fishchimes]

SHE'S NOT READY!!!! No safe RO BHS Back Tuck in sight!!!! Never done it by herself, refuses to compete L5 this season.

Sounds a bit like a girl at my gym. She's repeating level 5 because she has extremely bad kips and very inconsistent on ALL events, plus she really needs to lose the attitude. The problem is that she thinks that just because she did a BWO on beam ONCE, did a clear hip ONCE, did a front tuck ONCE she has those skills mastered. She is COMPLETELY CONVINCED that she should be doing level 6, yet she is not even motivated to actually work for her goal.

A few people took my previous posts the wrong way. They acted like I was saying that they should move up no matter what. No. What I'm saying is that even if the kid is missing a kip, as long as she has all of her other skills mastered and consistent and is reasonably close to making the kips, she should be considered for the next level. Now, if she is missing kips, AND CW on beam, AND safe tumbling, etc. that is a COMPLETELY different story. There was a girl at my gym who had no kips at the start of the season, still pulled 30s in the all-around, and managed to get both kips by mid-season. She was quite successful and ended up placing higher in AA than the girls who had kips at the start of the season. She did switch gyms and repeat level 5, but ultimately I think it is more worthwhile to repeat level 5 than level 4.

Another example, this time of a teammate who moved up mid-season. She did level 4 for almost 2 years despite being "off-track" in terms of age. She scored 38s in level 4 but had some difficulty getting the level 5 skills, particularly the high bar kip, so her scores did drop some when she moved up-- maybe an average of 32-34. She moved up to level 5 in january last year and is being considered for moving to level 6 in january this year. So moving mid-season does not have to be a bad thing. It may have worked better in this particular setting because it's a small gym, but in my opinion she completely deserved to move up.

 

[10.0]

Wow this thread has gotten so long, good subject! I would be interested to know why these parents are so pushy in having their kids move up? That would be like asking a school to move a kid up a grade level when they are not ready to or saying well she is good at reading, science and social studies but sucks at math so just let the math thing slide and move her up. I know it is a business and you have to balance making parents and kids happy with being resonable but you can't let them get ahold of the card to hold in the first place, change the rules now for everyone, spell it out in a paper and stick to it. You will lose a few, thing is you were bound to lose them anyways when some other thing didn't go their way. When I did gym you had to have the score and all of the next levels skills perfectly, I remember going from 5 to 6 was a huge deal because not only did you have to BWO on the beam it had to be from a raised leg to a 180 degree split, it was hard and held a lot of kids up and it was not even nessary but they wanted exceptional level 6's. That might have been going a bit too far but I would set some rules, if you want a score min. do that and to move from level 4 to 5 you must have a consistant kip, a back hand spring, a cart wheel on beam and a vault with a block out of it, something to that effect.

 

[emacmommy]

I would probably keep going with something like this. "I am truly sorry that you feel you are ready to compete Level 6. I really do not understand how this miscommunication has come about, and I apologize if I misled you to believe that you were ready to compete Level 6. You are not. I'm glad that you want to, and I'm excited to keep working those skills with you. You will get there, but you are not there now, and wanting it doesn't make it so. Only working hard, coming to practice regularly, doing all your conditioning and training will make it so. I know that it is not what you want to hear. It doesn't mean I don't like you, that you aren't a good gymnast, that I don't believe in you, or anything else, it just means you aren't ready YET."QUOTE]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your post. Never thought to reference that part of the USAG membership form. Brilliant! I'm usually really good at being politically correct and reasoning soundly with a cool head, but you gave such good words up there in your example. Thank you.

Don't anybody worry, we have no intention of letting them call the shots, but lots of thank you's for your encouragement. I did breech the question to my co-workers; where did we go wrong with these parents/gymnasts to lead them to believe they can do this? Where is the communication break down? We are going to do some consideration in retrospect and figure out where we can be more clear in the future.

So, we have not had parent meetings as of yet, but we did have an all team talk about a lot today, without naming names or being specific, and something very interesting was brought up.

Most of the girls do not know things are going on behind the scenes with these girls as these girls do train with respect. There is no verbal disrespect or attitude during practice... that I'm aware of. We brought up the fact that this is a sport, competition is part of sport and when you join a team you are expected to do things as a team. My wanna be L6 gymmie pipes up and says... "but this is an individual sport." Hmmmmm, now we know how she has been reasoning why she can be an exception to the rule. So, we clarified what is meant by that, and covered both grounds that 1) this IS a team sport (bringing up how the USAG selection committee "picks" girls who will contribute to a team gold medal for the USA, and using college gymnastics as an example as well), and 2) this is a SPORT and the definition of sport is competitive by nature. One must compete to make sport complete... We threw out a silly thought that if you don't compete in our sport, then it is considered recreational or they are training really hard to work for Cirque du Soliel (they giggled). But we guaranteed them that if they then decided as a Cirque employee that "hmmmm, I don't want to perform at certain venues," then they would be fired right off.

We re-explained that it is true, your gymnastics is your own as an individual, and noone can perform your events out there but you. You are in the spotlight as an individual being judged. You have control over the quality of practices, etc. This led to self-motivation and self-discipline and making sure they soul search to make sure they love a sport (really any sport) for the right reasons. Goal setting, comparing yourself to your own best self, ways to motivate (old school vs. now school, because both myself and my co-coach were trained in very intense gyms and we had to share that). We ran the gambit in 40 minutes, but it needed to be said.

I'm sure this is in no way over, but I was encouraged when I pulled my L6 wanna be aside as she was about to leave practice and asked if the director had pulled her aside to talk with her individually. I was worried when she said no, and she asked what it was about. I mentioned signing up for the meet as a L6 (BTW we have one sign up sheet for all levels and they circle the level or leave it blank. Last year we had a parent volunteer keep track of who signs up so the booster club could cut us a check for the proper amount, and the form just never got changed back, to answer a previous poster. I told her that in two weeks it just wasn't going to happen. She didn't argue or give me any attitude there and asked if she could do L5. Of course I said. I encouraged that if her parents had any questions with this, we should all get together, her, her parents, myself, our other coach, the director and all get on the same page. You can bet if that happens we will be using that nevertoolds scrip to some extent up there.

Thank you all again for hearing me out and the support here. I could never drum up this amount of wisdom by just cold calling my other gym contacts from home and other states to vent.