Not the most popular opinion, but I get what she's saying, and agree to an extent.
Gymnastics has seen (in my opinion) a huge increase of hours in the JO programs. When I competed in the 1990s, we were a fairly competitive USA Gym training compulsories around 8-10 hours a week. Optionals trained between 17-20. The problem comes when one gym increases the hours, the others feel they need to do the same in order to keep up, then it becomes wide spread.
Other sports are feeling the push more acutely. When I was in school, when you tried out for sports in 7th grade, most kids had only played recreationally or in gym class. Now, in some schools, it's hard to make a team if you haven't competed Club volleyball, Select softball, etc. So in 7th grade, the kids making the team are the ones who have played privately for several years, meaning that most of those kids committed to a sport in 3rd grade (ish). It's hard for a 3rd grade to know what they're going to want to play in high school, so parents are doing their best to guess that for them and hope they're right.
Are y'all not feeling that where you're located? My 21 year old quit gymnastics in 6th grade. She likely would have made the cheerleading team, but it wasn't really her thing. She wanted to play tennis in 7th grade and went to try out and looked pretty good to me. Served over the net, and all. The kid behind her at tryouts came in after her and looked like Venus Williams. My daughter didn't make the tennis team. In high school, she made the dance team, but was one of only a handful of kids on the entire 50 plus kid team that wasn't from a very competitive dance studio. And honestly, she only made the dance team because she had spent so much time in gymnastics from a young age.
If you're just a regular kid and play seasonal sports for fun, you're likely going to be shut out from making any kid of junior high or certainly a high school team here, and that is really too bad. Maybe it's more of a regional thing, but I see where she's going with the article.