Using my own child's experiences, a lot of times over the years I've felt like my answer here would be "don't enroll".
DD STILL talks about how much "fun" rec was.
She has a lot of fun on team where she is right now, but even still, insists it's a completely different fun. She doesn't want to go back to rec, but says that sometimes a small part of her wishes she'd have stayed rec.
So, I am truly having a hard time making a dream plan for a child, since it's hard to separate our kids' experiences from others.
It's difficult to consider having a kid move more aggressively than she is, given she's happy enough where she is. On the flip side, move any slower getting on team and kids may miss the boat.
So, if a kid seems capable of doing serious gymnastics, then ideally a preteam program should incorporate FUN, and not just form, conditioning, and flexibility. Even if I pay for extra time for my child to get it. It MUST be fun and silly to an extent. In that case, I could see targeting kids at age 4-5 for preteam... TOPS fundamentals and progressions should probably be incorporated into the program, but I don't know that kids need to "do TOPS".
So, 1-2 years of preteam. Compete L3 for fun and experience, but please just one year of it, unless it's truly unsafe to do level 4. Then do L4, then L5, then L6 or L7, depending on readiness. Maybe a repeat year in there if a kid REALLY needs it. But I think moving up each year helps motivate kids as well as coaching staff. Given this type of model, a later kid could start preteam at age 5, do L3 at age 7, L4 at 8, L5 at 9, L7 at 10, and go from there, hitting L10 by freshman year "easily enough" (no, not actually easy).
On the flip side, in a kid who isn't targeted early and/or isn't "serious", then I say find a good YMCA program and go from there. I think truly talented kids would thrive there anyway, and you can always move to a club gym should it be necessary. A part of me wishes my DD would have started in YMCA, rather than a more competitive JO gym... But at the time I'd just chosen the place closest to home.
