Has anyone else had people assume you're going to the trials for YOUR kid?!

[emilykatherine]

It is one of the most annoying comments/questions for my DD, who is turning 16 this month (thus age eligible) and also the people who ask why are you doing gymnastics if you are not going for the Olympics!

Agreed!! I do it for fun believe it or not!

 

[B.Gold]

After commenting all week to my manager how excited I was to go to the P&Gs I left work early Friday morning to make the first night of competition. As I was leaving, I thanked her for the time off, and added, "We won't be there Sunday night so no worries, I'll be back here first thing Monday morning"

Her response, "You just don't know, think positively!"... Huh?... And then it clicked, and it made the comment she said earlier in the week, about my dd competing against Simone, make more sense.

 

[JMACAZ]

Yes, by my ODD's friends Mom. Also saw a few friends on FB who got asked the same. I just had to laugh.

 

[rbearclaw]

Watching all my gymmie friends post about their San Jose adventures on FB, on every single post I see a relative wishing them good luck. It's funny watching them try to correct their grandma. [emoji13]

 

[Sasha]

Love all these stories! LOL.

And it's funny, because prior to 3 years ago when we stumbled upon competitive gymnastics as a kid's sport, *I* would have been one of those people assuming someone's teenage daughter was there to compete

I literally had no idea competitive gymnastics was a sport lots of regular kids did (only knew of rec classes). So I would have assumed someone COMPETING in gymnastics must be training in one of those hidden away facilities where only olympic hopefuls train. Probably some distant memory of the Karolyi's, something about a Ranch (though I couldn't have recalled the actual name or place), and remembering clips from 1980's TV coverage where parents of Olympians were profiled as having "sent their kids far away, giving up everything, foreign coaches, great sacrifice, blah blah something...". and so my whole perception of gymnastics training was from those randomly assembled memories. No idea that those kids being trained for the Olympics started in 'regular' gyms like many other thousands before ending up in those secret, hideaway training places. This was my mental model of gymnastics until 3 years ago - that somehow, special people associated with/connected to/related to these few, mostly foreign, Olympic coaches, somehow identified their kid as a candidate for Olympic gymnastics training (and there were only a few of them - like maybe a dozen or so), and decided from a young age that they would either move near to this mysterious training location, or send their kid away to train all her life at great expense. Then when she turned 14 (now 16) she could try out officially in the Trials. That's it. That's how I thought it worked as a complete layperson.

Think about it - we can see lots of kids outside playing soccer, baseball, heck even lacrosse and on rowing teams, but since gymnastics is an indoor sport, you just don't stumble upon gym meets (well, maybe in Texas where you can throw a rock and find a gym meet - LOL). So how would you know gym team is even a thing unless you happened to know someone personally whose kid was on the team?

Gymnastics really needs to work on its marketing.