WAG Age Divisions At Competition? (Xcel)

[gymperson]

Hi. My daughter just had her first Xcel bronze competition. I was expecting the age divisions for awards to be something like "8-10" or "7-8", ect. But the division were: Jr A, Jr B, Jr C, Senior A, Senior B. Can someone please explain the ages for each division to me? Thank you

 

[AlexandraU16]

Yep. They just typically take all the gymnasts and divide them into relatively even groups so the youngest 8-12 gymnasts will be Jr/Child A, the next 8-12 youngest will be B, and so on. That way they don’t have like 5 gymnasts in one age group and 30 in another. When it works out though Jr A will usually be all 5-6 year olds, Jr B all 7-8 year olds, etc, but it doesn’t always split up exactly like that.

 

[Coach Kate]

I will piggyback on and say your child may be in a different age group every meet - child C one week, jr A the next, etc.

 

[Pfiga]

This is completely normal for xcel. As explained above, they order the gymnasts in each session by age, and divide them into groups of the same size. At my daughter's last meet, the awards announcer actually mentioned up front that gymnasts whose birthdays are one day apart can be in different age groups. Some meets have three age groups, some have four, and they can call them different things. My daughter has been anywhere from the second youngest group to the oldest, depending on the meet.

 

[AlexandraU16]

And it can vary by level and organization. Last year we did USAG bronze and there were always so many littles that my daughter (who was almost 6) was always with girls within a few months of her age. This year doing AAU silver she is always in the youngest group but twice that group has included girls up to two years older because they just didn’t have that many 6-7 year old silvers to have their own group. It can be confusing how it works out but they try to be as fair as possible and we are learning to just roll with it.