Floor in high school

[ryantroop]

Im sort of left wondering what state this is (please don't tell me. It just bothers me for some reason).. In Illinois there is just a standard for what is expected in high school competition...

I find it a bit irksome that a public school wouldnt want a higher standard of equipment, since they have to pay for the insurance cost anyway... Investing in a new set of bars, and having a team build a spring floor, can last for years... it's not like we buy $10,000 bars every year, or buy a new floor every 3 years.. you just replace boards and springs. It's maintenance.. A tumble strip doesnt take up a whole lot of space, and a torn down spring floor doesnt take up a whole lot of space either. It takes all of 30 minutes to put together a floor if properly stored and prepared. WIth practice it gets fast, and with 20 girls, it goes even faster. Makes for a good warm up too... With a dedicated gymnastics gym, there is NO excuse IMO, other than failure to understand how to build one.

It also depends if they are really a part of the national high school association, or if they are run more as clubs instead of athletic teams... something seems to be missing from this whole picture... maybe Im just getting too involved in something that's none of my business....

 

[Tumblequeensmom]

I'm not sure if you were able to leave it up other time, but in our area not only does the equipment have to be taken out for meets (which everyone participating at the meet helps with), it has to be set up for practice each day. And then removed. I can think of only maybe two schools that have a room where the equipment can be left up. As many practices are less than two hours, when there is a half hour of equipment set up and take down, it cuts in. You end up having maybe one hour so most of the time we had a choice, do we set up beam or bars today (bars takes awhile)? So it's tough. Usually we would just unroll a couple strips of floor which was easier than setting up a spring floor. Maybe once in awhile they could set up a tumbling strip but since the program already got cut I don't foresee that. I know one team has an air mat they use. Many cheer programs have been working with all star gyms in order to use equipment like tumble track, spring floor, etc as this is a very good source of business for smaller all star gyms but gymnastics has not been nearly as open. Which is a shame because it could be a great source of business and participation which would be win-win if we could just get over ourselves. But I'll save that soapbox for another time.

EXACTLY!!! We're lucky to still have a high school gymnastics program at all!!!

 

[Tumblequeensmom]

Ryantroop: There's just not the budget to go and buy all the latest equipment. We're facing cuts up here, as well as the neighboring counties. It's just not feasible to even request the money for higher quality equipment. And let's face it, gymnastics is not, and never will be, a sport that brings money into the school system... as I said above, we're just lucky the girls have another outlet to practice gymnastics and experience a high school team. And yes, the school (county) is all part of the NHSF.. and a few girls each year do qualify to attend the national high school meet.

As Gymdog stated, the girls are responsible for setting up and taking down all equipment before and after practice. There are NOT 20 girls on the team... maybe closer to 10. The practices are squeezed in between the various basketball teams, cheer practice, and anything else that the gym may be used for... it's just the way it is. And it really does work out just fine. The girls who are club gymnasts practice mostly w/their clubs, and the girls who have minimal gymnastics experience are just happy to get any time to practice at all. Also, many of the local gyms hold "open gyms" at a discounted rate during gymnastics season, so the girls can also go and practice there as well.

As far as club gymnasts and high school practices... at least at my daughter's school (and a few others in the county)... if you're already in a club, and practice regularly there with your club team, you are allowed to miss most of the high school team practices. I know at my DD's school, the coach just wanted her to be there once a week to get the feel of the HS equipment. And of course, those routines are adjusted for high school rules. The coaches realize that the girls are definitely getting a better, more intense workout at their clubs, than at the hour-long practice after school in the high school gymnasium!

It's not perfect, but the girls adapt quite well and have some fun along with it. After all, the high school teams are all about the TEAM score, not the individual score that matters so much in Club!

 

[gymdog]

I find it a bit irksome that a public school wouldnt want a higher standard of equipment, since they have to pay for the insurance cost anyway... Investing in a new set of bars, and having a team build a spring floor, can last for years... it's not like we buy $10,000 bars every year, or buy a new floor every 3 years.. you just replace boards and springs. It's maintenance.. A tumble strip doesnt take up a whole lot of space, and a torn down spring floor doesnt take up a whole lot of space either. It takes all of 30 minutes to put together a floor if properly stored and prepared. WIth practice it gets fast, and with 20 girls, it goes even faster. Makes for a good warm up too... With a dedicated gymnastics gym, there is NO excuse IMO, other than failure to understand how to build one.

Well, I understand the amount of space a tumble strip takes up, but there is not space for it at the high school I went to. The area where the equipment is stored (in pieces) would not be able to accommodate that. The area where it is set up is used daily for gym classes. A half hour to set it up would waste half of the practice time.

As far as bars, they are too expensive for a sport that could be cut at any moment. That's just the reality. I'm not saying it's my ideal, obviously, but this is expensive equipment for a relatively small sport. All sports are facing a funding crises right now and schools are looking at how to tack on athletic fees in order to accommodate the budget.

I understand in several midwestern states (IL, WI) there are high school programs that are relatively competitive and large (i.e. have more than varsity level). However this in my experience is not the case in most of the country. Some places don't really have high school gymnastics at all, and other places have very limited programs.

The best thing for high school gymnastics in our state would be for the private clubs to reach out and make sure this program survives, because that would be the surest, safest, and easiest way for our particular sport, which requires specialized knowledge and equipment. This, although some don't seem to realize, would actually help everyone out as far as I can see because I don't think the disappearance of high school gymnastics is going to really add utility to anyone's situation. But again, this is kind of veering off topic. If someone wants to discuss the issue of private clubs reaching outside of the USAG JO structure to survive and becoming community programs, then I would write more about this there.

Edit: Another issue to me is that each school right now basically has it's own equipment. I understand high school sports can be about rivalries and all and joint practices wouldn't fly with football, but it's already happening here with gymnastics teams anyway. To continue to have these small teams and small schools all work with their own equipment makes no sense. It would make more sense for the county to designate the schools that have the facility to leave equipment up, have shared and rotating practice times in that room (which is only gymnastics equipment so that is what it is being used for). Inconvenient but more efficient in many ways. And it is more fair, because those schools basically get free reign with their after school practice time, since they don't share space, while at my school we had an hour from 9-10 after the gym was used for basketball, winter track training, etc.

 

[ryantroop]

I agree - co-ops are a great solution to funding issues - but to some degree, they can hurt if pushed too far.

Space issues.. are space issues.. schools get a building budget, and the community needs to get behind the expansion and support the production of new facilities.

Im not blind to the fact that there is no money available, in general, around the country. However, at a coaches association meeting, where the coaches can get ADs involved, suggesting a co-op solution and consolidating some schools may alleviate some of the monetary problems, and give a chance to more athletes to compete as they were meant to.

Believe me, it's not all happy days in Illinois, etc... it's difficult. I would love to help an ititiative to re-energize high school gymnastics, nationwide or otherwise. PErsonally, I just don't know how I know my gymnastics inside and out, but I don't know politics or what it would really take to start up a new team, let alone get schools interested in a sport that most people look at as a money sink.

I disagree that gymnastics will never bring in money. The reason that football and baseball make money is because it's easily picked up, and accessable to many - on top of that, it gets an abnormally high amount of media coverage. If there were a way that we, as a community as a whole, could push for more media coverage, so people could understand what the sport is about - and a way that we could easily help people see progress from gymnasts, more people would be interested. It's such a shame that most parents have NO understanding about why their child scores a 7.7 vs a 9.7. In many ways, I sorta blame the parents a bit for their lack of interest - on the other hand, I dont blame the parents because as I get older and take on more responsiblity, I find that I have less and less time to dedicate to learning more about much of anything...

One day... hopefully it will come back. Im sad that boy's gymnastics has all but disappeared in the nation. Gymnasts are among the healthiest people, but that alone doesn't motivate people to put money into it.

 

[gymdog]

Well, I don't think any high school sports bring in much money, and whatever they do tends to get funneled back through the program or shared so I'm not really concerned about that as the problem.

I don't think it is realistic that renovation schedules are going to go around space for additional athletic programs. The renovation schedule (there are more than 200 schools in my county) depends on building codes, building ages, the last renovation, patterns in the area as far as enrollment and whether the building can actually accommodate for education the children in the catchment area. I am not sure how schools work in other places but the schools do not get a "budget" here in order to build on expansions, that is a renovation that goes by a countywide schedule of which schools will be reviewed, approved, during which years. For example, my particular high school was not approved for renovation in the last year it came up, and I believe it is set to be reviewed again in 2012. Since it has not been over capacity and this neighborhood is not the largest growing in terms of young families, I would be surprised if a renovation was approved in 2012, but it can be hard to tell.

The quality of the school system is actually top notch, it is one of the largest, wealthiest and best managed in the nation to be honest. But nothing is perfect. The educational programs have to come first and athletic programs have to "give." I would not understate the importance of athletic programs, however when decisions have to be made I would rather see gymnastics be a little less than ideal than to have PE cut from the school day for hundreds of kids who go home and can't participate in after school activities.

Again I would reiterate that the best path for high school gymnastics is through the support of the USAG and other programs in the country that have the specialized knowledge and equipment to offer. This is for our sport. It is the same sport. When people do not see these opportunities for their children at these older ages, do you really think that looks good for your sport? No. It doesn't. People see this and think this is nice activity for little kids but when they're 8 I'll put them in soccer because they know that 15 year old Allie down the street plays soccer at the high school and they go to the games to cheer and want to be like her. Let's not even talk about cheerleading - need I say more? Gyms - you will lose pretty much every decent experienced rec kid who is not quite competitive to cheerleading in the future if high school gymnastics disappears. You better start a cheer program yourself...or try to support less intensive high school age competitive opportunities. Cheerleading's becoming the end game for gymnastics right now.

It is amazing to me how many club owners and club coaches not only don't want to actively save programs (at least you can chalk that up to being busy or not knowing) but they actually don't care or don't like high school gymnastics. It's not enough to say well they aren't good, the coaches aren't good. So get involved and get coaches going to your gym to learn with qualified staff. Again, this has been a huge thing in all star cheer gyms. High school team coaches go to these gyms with their teams in order to access better facilities and coaching. The gym gets the fee, the girls get better coaches, parents see opportunities for their children, injuries go down and the county isn't worried about liability.

This is really the ONLY long term solution I see for many parts of the country. Otherwise there are many concerning trends that I don't see reversing. Everyone who is working in private clubs and cares about not losing these programs needs to try and actively get their programs on board to this "agenda." Some ideas: start a high school class for the offseason, start a conditioning and basics class for high school athletes, reach out to the local high school coaches with opportunities for workout time. Again: cheerleading. I'm just saying.

Edit: I agree about boy's gymnastics. It is a very disturbing trend. However I think if gyms could actually work with the high school programs and get the girl's programs going stronger, and also yes, work with cheer. There are a lot of boys interested in learning tumbling who are starting to pop up in cheer programs for lack of gymnastics. If coaches at the high school level can talk to these boys and least push to have them allowed to do floor at high school meets - this could be one way to get them back in the game and possibly push for more. I have seen it happen before, the boys end up being allowed to compete on the girls' team, of course they can't do all 6 mens' events but at least they can do what they can and hopefully draw more boys. Something to think about for those who work with high school programs.

Bottom line, I think if USAG did some kind of top down campaign about high school gymnastics, it would be a good thing. I'm not suggesting they actually would do that, but if someone is super enthusiastic about this, from my standpoint, then this is where you need to go and the argument you'd want to present for them.

 

[coachmolly]

My high school did not have the equipment, nor did they want to pay for the necessary insurance, to have an on campus gymnastics program. However, individuals involved in local club programs came in to make it a possibility. There was a class set up at the closest USAG gym- located within the school district- for athletes with no gym affiliation or experience to learn some skills and develop routines. I do think a small cost was involved, but coaches were going out of their way to make this a possibility. Unfortunately, no one took advantage of it. I'm not sure if it was the added cost, the fact that they would have had to provide their own transportation, the lack of convenience, or something totally different, but it just did not materialize. Maybe something has changed in the past few years, but it seems that many of the girls currently involved on the high school team are also involved with USAG or USAIGC programs. But perhaps this would not be such an issue in an area where gymnastics was a little bit bigger and parents were more willing to help out. But here, it seems as though if it's not free and the school doesn't take care of every aspect of it, they aren't interested.

 

[gymdog]

It certainly depends on the strength of the program in the area. Here it is a mixed bag as far as beginners and former/current club participants, and what level the gymnast is. To be clear I am not suggesting to totally do away with the school program, but for USAG gyms to provide alternate support. A club in my area opened and started a high school class for the offseason and additional practice. They actively worked with the school coaches as far as times and it was very popular here.

However there will still be some holes, for example from where I actually live there is no gym, everything is about 25-30 miles away. So clearly this is a limited solution. But still I think the only solution we have.

The model I am talking about would involve the team still doing the regular practice they have now, but once per week or in the offseason once they are involved, to go to a gym with better equipment and coaching. Even just several sessions. I have worked in all star gyms and teams do this, about once a week, during the summers. They carpool, etc, to make it easier. Also the clubs can get involved in the high school meets, they actually are not that complicated to hold. Also the aforementioned gym offered to host a high school meet so the girls could use the equipment. This is another good thing, although of course the logistics of this are much tougher. However other gyms have not followed suit here. There is still tension between the club coaches and high school.

 

[tough gymnast]

well i don't have that problem, i compete in high school gymnastics and we have the same floor as all of the other girls who are competing level 4, 5, 6, etc. but i have never see a gymnastics floor without springs in person, i have seen it on tv but that is it.

 

[superflipgirl]

Okay well thanks everyone but I just want to say something. If it's too much of an effort to install a spring floor, they should do something to make the high school floor better. I saw a video on youtube of a high school gymnast competing on a floor that was really a couple of mats stacked up instead of just 1, and she did a front tuck, front tuck on it! Does anyone agree that they should put a little more effort into the floor? I see lots of youtube videos of high school gymnasts who get to compete on spring floors or at least more than one mat!