Coaches AGA floor routine, HELP!

[Linsul]

I'm going to Google (google, how I love thee!) AGA, but in the meantime I was hoping for some advice from knowledgeable people here.

I've only ever coached USAG bars and vault competitively. Of course I did floor/beam when I had to, but there was another coach who taught the routines. So when I did sub for her or she went out of town we always worked on skills or they performed the routine they learned from her. I have choreographed lots of dance for dancers, and some floor routine dance in a joint venture with various optionals coaches. Both have gone very well, the girls did great. I have never done it fully on my own though and am wondering if I should!

You can probably tell where this is going lol. An ex gymnast of mine who is USAG level 4 wants me to choreograph her AGA floor routine. I got a voicemail regarding it from her mom where she's hollering 'YOU HAVE TO DO IT! ' in the background. I didn't get a whole lot of info, and we're now playing phone tag. The gymnast in question is one I used to coach but who eventually moved gyms to get on a team. Her mom and I are friends too, so I really don't want to mess up basically.

Anyway, I know nothing of AGA req's for floor. She says she can do her robhs/bt and that's all I know! Not required routine length, or dance elements, restricted tumbling, or if any of those concerns even exist! I'm off to google now, but any advice would be much appreciated. I'd rather get it here from actual people than articles or random sites.

 

[gymdog]

Most of the time when optional routines are choreographed, the choreo simply leaves a "space" in for a leap series, jumps, and a turn. The coach adds in the specific correct skills later. But I'd just ask for the coach's phone number or email and ask about how many they need. Still, even if you couldn't get that, I would just leave in a space for each of those, and a gym-acro, and I think it wouldn't cause too much trouble. Eliminating an extra jump series wouldn't be difficult to do. I would think it's pretty safe to assume a leap series and turn are at least strong preference compositionally if not explicitly required.

I don't think it would be too hard for you. I know people with much worse dance backgrounds who have choreographed floor routines. Since you're familiar with gymnastics-style dance, i don't think it would be a problem. I'd ask for the music in advance to get some basic ideas (and you know the kid, so know the personality), then adjust as you work with her.

 

[Linsul]

Thanks very much gymdog! Google let me down, all the sites I found only had information like dates and such for meets. I'm terrible and lost without a code of points it would seem lol.

She doesn't need the routine for a few months so there's time to get with her coach. I don't have much free time floating around but if I can get her music soon enough beforehand then it should be all good. Since she's been at a different gym I havn't been able to see where she's at skill-wise personally. I'll probably do that first just so I don't get surprised with totally mismatched music.

 

[Linsul]

Okay I'm going to update this because I learned some interesting info tonight!

Gymmie's mom seemed a little frazzled and confused as to what would be ok for her to do in regards to the routine according to her gym. She also never got me the coaches number which I thought was odd. I figured hey whatever, she doesn't need the routine until January maybe she's lagging and set a mental date of saying 'no.' at 10/15/09 if I heard nothing from her before then. Meanwhile I checked with my gym to see if it was okay for me to do this.

Not only did both my boss and the owner say it was okay, they seemed excited for me to do it! They told me to feel free to teach it to her at our gym, ask for help with music, whatever. This was about 10 days ago or so.

Fast forward to today. I get a call from gymmies mom. At the meet today, her 2nd, she got an AA of 34.2 something. Yay! She then told me that her gyms 'choreographer' was going to charge her $300 for a routine, which came only with 1 1/2 hours of instruction, 2 weeks before competing it. I know lauded gym choreographers who don't charge that much, and ALL of them instruct them more (if they are local gymnasts). I got pretty butthurt at that point, maybe pride is messing with me but if a routine is going to have MY name on it you can bet I'll be working my butt off to help that gymmie turn it out.

It gets better though!! This family is really working hard and has xmas coming up and such with more kids than just the gymnast. The coach was ready to schedule payment and such. The mom mentioned me as an outside possibility for doing the routine, the owner straight up told her I am NOT welcome because she doesn't like my gym. Well! Good thing they can come to my gym! I wasn't sure if I was going to do it before, but after seeing that price and the extent the mom was nearly forced into a corner I sure am!

Best part is her husband is an electrician, we're trading services rather than money. I need some outlets and phone jacks upstairs lol. As far as time spent at the gym, she'll just be paying the gym's portion ($10 an hour) and I'll get my nifty new lights hooked up We're working it out, she's going to look awesome!