Gold Coast Clubs Advice

[Akela]

Hello everyone!

My son and I will be moving back to the Gold Coast from Canada in about 6 months time. He used to do recreational in both Superperformance Center and Gold Coast Gymnastics, and when we moved to Canada last year he was invited to join the PreCompetitive Team. Now that we are coming back, I need to decide which club to send him to. Do you have any suggestions, or personal advice? They both sound really good, the Head Coaches professional and prompt. I was wondering which has the best MAG program, and atmosphere?

Thank you so much in advance!!!

 

[Aussie_coach]

You are lucky to have such wonderful choice. Both the Gold Coast gymnastics club and the Super Performance Centre have excellent MAG proa,a. My es, both have very good head coaches and both gyms are producing excellent national standard athletes.

Probably the biggest part would come down to age. How old is your son and what level is he training?

 

[Akela]

Thank you! He is 5 1/2 right now, so only little. In Canada he wouldn't be competing till around 8yo, at this moment he is in PreCompetitive, and he trains 3/weeks 2hr/each session. We have been told by both clubs he will be able to enter Level3 and train with the 7-9 yo.

From what I have gathered from the emails, SPC is a High Performance Centre in its own, and they can train higher number of hours, whereas GCG is a club, and a HPC feeder. Truth be told, I am lost. I am not sure what the main difference is.

I have tried looking up threads here, but I got confused with IDP/ NPD, and how I should get him in the right club straight away, or he will miss out on the chance of competing at a higher level if he has the capability.

If both are great and both offer a possibility for advancement should he decide to continue gymnastics in the future, I suppose I will just visit when I get there, and let my little guy choose.

What do you reckon?

 

[pamred4]

This might not help but competing against Gold Coast (in WAG) the girls are fierce, beautiful gymnasts who bring home everything every time we compete against them, sorry if this doesn't help... Best of luck

 

[Akela]

Looks like the boys are just as good...

 

[Aussie_coach]

Hi Aleka,

Yes, the main difference is the SPC will train the kids for High performance themselves, while Gold Coast will train the, for high performance then send them to the HPC when they reach the higher level.

But there is no IDP or NDP for MAG. That is for WAG.

In MAG there are levels 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to start off and all boys do the same routines at this level if they are high performance or not. You can start competing from level 1, but most gyms start competing from level 2 where they is more competition experience. From level 3 they can go to a state level for competition.

In competitions there are then two divisions. The overs and unders. Unders are usually kids who are the right age to be on track for elite. So there is level 2 under 7, level 3 under 8, level 4 under 9, level 5 under 10 (these are new ages introduced this year, they were older before). To be in the under division they need to be under that age on the 1st of January in the year they compete. But as I said before everyone does the same routines.

After level 5 you can take the elite path or the normal path. The normal path you just go through levels 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. From level 7 you can compete at nationals. After level 10 you could still go onto international gymnastics if you had the ability. This is a major difference from WAG.

Then there is the elite path with skips level 6 and goes to level 7 under 12, Level 8 under 14, level 9 under 17 and then senior international. All levels compete at nationals and at Senior international they can qualify for worlds, Olympics etc.

If you want to go the High performance pathway you would be better off going to SPC because if you live on the Gold Coast the commute to the HPC will be time consuming as it is in brisbane.

 

[Akela]

Thank you so much Aussie_coach, you explained it very well! Everything is clear now - it really is different from up in Canada!

This forum is great : )