I empathize. My dd is in eighth grade this year—and I also tend to overanalyze the gym vs. academics question.
Of course you and your daughter will have to consider her long-term goals, which may be properly amorphous at her age. As you noted, the chance of achieving a gymnastics scholarship is not great, and “8s on everything†at level 8 as an eighth grader isn’t necessarily a fast track to a full ride, so keeping her in the gym just to chase a scholarship might not be the best of all possible choices. People value different levels of academic success in high school, so there’s a choice to be made there, too. (Just as earning a gymnastics scholarship requires talent, effort, and a time commitment that is beyond most gymnasts, admission to an elite school requires similarly extreme academic effort; for example, just being an "A student" isn’t going to impress many admissions officers these days: 40% of the kids in the large local high school have at least a 4.0 GPA, while 91% of the kids admitted to Stanford last fall had GPAs of 4.75 or higher, and thus must have carried essentially the heaviest possible load of demanding, college-level Advanced Placement courses while in high school.) Fortunately, it’s quite clear that children can somehow grow up to lead happy and productive lives even if they never managed to scrape up a placement at Nationals or didn't graduate from a top-tier university, so the major issue that you and I are both facing is finding a way to help our daughters to balance the demands of an enjoyable, hopefully healthy activity with the demands of academics and other enjoyable (and also hopefully healthy) activities.
Not so bad.
My child trains fewer hours than yours does; that's enough to to allow her to learn to fly at her gym while keeping up with increasingly demanding homework requirements, but not enough to make her a standout in her second year at Level 9 (although it may be her genetic background—with me as her father—rather than the training time that limits her performance.) She currently plans to do four years at Level 10 and then probably move on without competing in college, but if even her restricted training hours prove too demanding, I think that she’ll stop competing but keep training on a school-friendly schedule. (Kids here are not released early from school for club sports, and gymnasts are still required to take PE and a regular, full schedule.) There’s a clear precedent for that at her gym, where some older high school kids who love gymnastics but who have had to choose to prioritize their education continue to develop their skills by training with the team in the time that they have available, although they stopped competing years ago. That’s a nice option, which would allow dd to maintain her gym friendships, stay fit, and have fun. Gymnastics has been good for her and a good experience for our family, and I hope that she'll be able to find a way to continue in the sport for as long as she desires.
As far as missing out on the high school experience: really, I wouldn’t have minded missing out! Dunno had a good post on the student-athlete issue in this thread, which also included other insightful comments regarding gymnasts of your daughter’s approximate age:
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I don't know why I am feeling this way.... but here it goes. My dd is a L8, 13 yo, 8th grader, trains 22 hrs a week. We have a big decision on what high school to attend next year. Stay public or go to private. Private has a ton of homework, but is an excellent school, also very expensive or stay publlic- still good, not a lot of homework etc.
