Questions:
What do you really like about the way Gymnastics is in your set up?
Our club is not an elite gym club, but we do aim to make the gymnasts the best they can possibly be - both in terms of their gymnastics ability and as a person.
I like that we have a family feel to our club, and once parents know us, are very comfortable in approaching us and telling us if something is worrying them.
I like that we are able to retain gymnasts in the sport for a long time - one of our aims as a club is to instill a life long love for the sport in all our gymnasts, and it is a great testament to us that many of our coaches have finished university, got full time jobs and still come and coach for us, having been with the club since they were aged 5!
I like the fact that our gymnasts all have smiles on their faces at competitions, and are oblivious to the politics!
What don't you like about your set up?
on a superficial note, I don't like our kit!
On a more serious note, I don't like the fact that we can't ever seem to use our time efficiently in the gym purely because of the size of our facility! In our competition squad we have 30 gymnasts split into 4 groups. If they are vaulting for example, there is no room for the coach to send the gymnasts off to different stations to practice various things - all the gymnasts can do is wait for their turn - they even have to start their run up in an area that used to be a changing room, but we adapted it to become a run up extension!
In terms of competitions - I really don't think we get enough competitions per year (our recreational novice squad have more that the women's artistic!)
I agree that we should have more placings in competitions - in our region there aren't even ribbons - just places for AA 1-3. The only competition where individual apparatus medals are given is our county championships!
Have you noticed anything in other set ups you would really like to see?
I'd love it if our club had a viewing gallery or similar so that parents could watch their children, I'd also love to do more fun stuff with our gymnasts like displays, going out for meals/trips etc - I think this is something we lack.
I'd also love it if there were more summer camps in the UK.
I wish we had a bigger gym with room for a dance studio, pit, trampoline and fast track (we are working on it!)
Is there anything you are really glad you don't have?
I'm really glad we don't have a huge rent to pay!
Other than that, not really! There is a lot I'd like to have but can't think of anything I'm glad we don't have
I think it will be really interesting to see what we all think.
Some background info would also be good - Level, System (eg USAG, BG)
Like I said at the beginning, we are not an elite club, we compete at county, regional and national level but we haven't done the elite grades for a while now. We also have a recreational novice squad of boys and girls and are in the process of setting up a men's artistic squad. We have over 400 members in our club, the majority of whom are recreational and train once a week. Our youngest gymnasts are 3 and our oldest currently is 18 (although it was me at 26 until recently!)