Parents Flight A/B

[twinmomma]

Tomorrow is our state meet and I'm trying to understand how the schedule works. This is the first meet that has the sessions broken up into "Flight A" and "Flight B". Can anyone explain what this means? We've had meets that had two full setups going at once, is that all this is?

Just trying to understand what to expect.

 

[kaloss]

I think that's what it is. We are hosting our level 9 regionals and we have two flights, and two full setups.

 

[Azgymmiemom]

If your gymmie is in flight b, it means you will be waiting awhile to start! Usually this means there will be two sets of equipment (except floor) Flight A squads will warm up first on the Flight A equipment. When they start to compete, the Flight B kids will get to warm up on the Flight B equipment. When the kids in Flight A are all done competing, the judges will turn around or move to the tables by the Flight B equipment and start judging those kids. The next set of Flight A will start to warm up on the Flight A equipment. And so on and so forth until everyone is done. Warm ups are timed and each kid should get their fair warm up allotment. Good luck!

 

[Empowered]

Flight A will warm up on the first event. When they are done, they will compete on the equipment they warmed up on while flight B warms up on the second set of equipment. After Flight A is done competing, Flight B will compete on their set of equipment (as they will be done with warmup) and Flight A will rotate to the next event and begin warming up on the Flight A equipment.

The only event this can be different on is floor. Sometimes with 2 flights they have 2 floors, sometimes they only have one floor.

If they have 2 floors, nothing changes.

If they have one floor, they can choose to have the B flight warm-up between the routines of the A flight. The makes it so you aren't slowed down by just one floor. At my daughter's state meet they had this set-up (2 sets of everything but floor) and only the very first flight had a blocked warm-up on floor. Every subsequent flight warmed up between the flight ahead of them.

 

[MeetDirector]

twinmomma -

Both AZgymmiemom and Empowered have it correct. The two flight approach is a method to get more athletes through a session in a fixed amount of time. It is putting most of the time available in a session to the actual competition; using the time that one group gets to warm-up to do the competiton for the other group. For the engineers out there, this is the closest we get to parallel processing as opposed to serial processing in a meet. It helps a ton when you have large numbers in a session. Look at it this way too, while your dd is warming up, you will have something else to watch. After the first timed warm-up period it is non-stop gymnastics until the end. Floor does get very crazy since the judges don't move and you will see the flight B athletes start warming up floor about half-way through the first flight but they will usually do it in between the routines of the previous flight girls.

 

[htimcj]

That is how all of our meets work. It seems to be very efficient. One warms up while the other competes and floor still goes quickly because the warm up in between routines.

 

[gymgal]

Just to add, what has been described is a modified capital cup format where there are 2 sets of equipment and the girls warm up on the equipment they will compete on. The judges move between the 2 sets of equipment (except floor). But flights are also used in traditional capital cup where there is a separate gym where all the gymnasts warm up and then they get "touches" on the actual competition equipment. DD has had a couple state meets that have done it this way (and several invitationals throughout the years). I don't like it regular capital cup because you can't see them warm up - which is when I like taking still pictures of the girls. Besides, it just seems weird to make the girls warm up on one set but compete on another...

 

[twinmomma]

Interesting. The school the meet is at has two gyms, so I wondered if they may be making use of the space for the separate "Flights". But I guess we'll see. There are a LOT of gymnasts in each session, so I'm still flabbergasted they are going to be able to get through them as quickly as the schedule shows.

 

[wnl256]

I've also seen modified capital cup done with warm-up equipment separate from the competition equipment. That's how our state meet was done, because there wasn't enough room in the gym to set up both sets of equipment. The warmup gym was in a different room, and each flight would warm up their next event then come in, do a touch warmup, then compete.

At both our state meet and at Charleston Cup, rather than a second full-sized floor they had a runway floor where they could warm up their tumbling runs. Charleston Cup was especially nuts because they had four sets of equipment (minus the two extra full-sized floors) and were doing two separate sessions each with two flights.

 

[wnl256]

Interesting. The school the meet is at has two gyms, so I wondered if they may be making use of the space for the separate "Flights".

Unless they can fit two sets of equipment in one gym, they will probably use one gym for competition and the other for warmups. When one flight is done competing, they will swap places. When you don't have to wait for warmups, you can get through gymnasts fast (especially if it is a compulsory level).

 

[wnl256]

Also, it is still considered all one session. You gymnast will be competing against all the girls in her age group from both flights.

 

[twinmomma]

Also, it is still considered all one session. You gymnast will be competing against all the girls in her age group from both flights.

Got it. I had already figured as much since they were all the same session. That puts her in a group of 21, including her.

 

[wnl256]

Got it. I had already figured as much since they were all the same session. That puts her in a group of 21, including her.

That's not unusual for state. My DD had 18 in her age group at state.