Anon Junior elite hopeful struggling a bit on bars

[Anonymous (adfb)]

My 13 year old daughter is training to make junior elite next year. She has very high difficulty and amazing dance on floor (she competes a full in and double layout), beam (all elite skills with double back dismount) , and vault (full yurchenko). The challenge is that she isn't the strongest on bars. She competes the Jaeger and pak and its a 50/50 on catching the Jaeger at times. She does front giants, 360 pirorehuette, and a double pike dismount. She is 13 as mentioned. Will this hold her back from making elite, being that her other 3 events look beautiful and ate very strong. I am thinking she still has some time to work on better consistency on bars and in adding another release. Thoughts?

 

[Anonymous (eb5e)]

The elite compulsory routines are available on the USAG website. I don't know offhand what the required score for compulsory is, but her coach should, and the optional qualifying score to the elite meets can change year to year. As long as she can pass the compulsories, her other three events could be strong enough to pull her through optionals. There are also typically one, two, and three event scores to achieve if she really can't get bars.

Elite Compulsory Program • USA Gymnastics

usagym.org

 

[Anonymous (880f)]

Is she a tiny 13 year old who hasn’t gone through puberty yet, is she in the middle of it, or is she on the other side?

If she’s right in the middle of her growth spurt then it would make sense that releases are a struggle as her brain re-maps her body. Depending on the planned timing of her qualification and where her body is at, it might be better to leave the junior elite qualifying plans as a pretty general thing while you watch to see what her body is going to do. It doesn’t mean she can’t go through compulsory qualifiers but you could assess where she’s at after that.

There’s at least one name I recognized at Winter Cup who successfully made it through multiple years of compulsory qualifications before she got her elite scores and finally qualified. It might be good to do it that way and get that experience but admit that bars might be in the way for a bit so there’s no time pressure.

And then if it works out early, great, and if not, she’ll know what to expect at the next qualifier.

 

[Anonymous (adfb)]

Thanks for the great feedback. She is actually near done with her growth spurts. Luckily she was slow and steady and according to the pediatrician she will grow maybe another inch, max 2 before reaching her final adult height.

She has been scoring 46.5- 47.5 in mock competitions, so she isn't far off from the 48.6 but bars is definitely what holds her back from 49.

I just wonder if her strong floor, vault and beam cN eventually make up foe her weaker bars.