What does she want in a gym?
Is she highly competitive? Does she want to go for states, nationals, eventually college etc?
Does she want higher hours our lower hours?
What would your finances was allow? Not just training costs but uniforms, competitions, travel.
How many comps do each team do? Travel meets? How many?
What are the training hours like? Will you be able to get her there on time? How late would she finish?
What is the general energy of the gym? Do there seem to be a lot of injuries? Are the kids all engaged and enthusiastic? Do they seem to connect with their coaches and each other?
These are great questions.
We see gyms that travel a lot with expenses well north of $6k for meets/travel and $800 leos and gyms that stay more local for $1500 a year and keep leos/warmups in the $300. It is critical that a family understand the culture meets for each gym. Some gyms see meets as fun and energetic. Other gyms are so serious the girls barely smile.
Other questions:
- what volunteering is required/expected?
- does the gym operate completely with gym staff or does a parent organization run most of the non-coaching type of items.
- what is the gymnast to coach ratios at each level?
- if there are few girls at higher levels (8-10) - are the coaches capable at those levels or do their expertise end at around L7/8? (sometimes there is a lull at a gym just b/c of situations - our gym has 0 L9 and 10s right now but has produced national champions at both levels.)
- what do the scores look like at the gym at each level?
- what is the mentality of the coaches with moving up? Does the gymnast need a 37/38AA to move up or is it purely based on skills?
- do the coaches uptrain at all during meet season?
- has there been a "mass exodus" lately? Why?
FWIW we switched gyms 2 years ago. we were most concerned about coach/gymnast ratio, the quality of coaches, and L4-L8 scores. We did move to a gym that has produced national champions at L9 and 10 but b/c they are not great with college recruiting tend to lose the girls after L8 to go to another gym. We were OK with that b/c our DD was going into L4 and it was more important to have the highly skilled coaches pushing DD to be amazing now than to worry about a L9 year that may never happen.