One level 8, four 6's, four 5's, seven 4's ( 3 repeats) ten 3's (4 repeats).
If I can assume the L6 kids are in the new L6 program and will be doing basic optional optional work, and add those 4 to the remaining L8 and the three other optional kids who've left the program (2- L8's that went to L9, and 1- L6 that went L7), I come up with 3 L8's and 5 L6's being backed up by a compulsory program of 21 kids. That's just a bit under a 25/75 percent distribution, and that's not all that shabby. I'd feel better if one of the following conditions existed:
First would bet that the abilities of the kid's, at their respective optional levels, was above average and proven in competition, and the training they're doing to "pay it forward" was advanced enough that their first step into the next two levels was an easy one. It sounds like that could be what's is taken place, considering all 3 girls who've left have instantly moved up a level.
The next condition is that the gym is still developing and is making progress toward filling up their optional program. Evidence of that might be apparent if they first opened their doors 4-7 years ago. Sorry for the broad range, but a gym takes longer to develop if the team program consists primarily of kids who've come up within the gyms program, as opposed to the other side of the coin that has gyms taking other program's best kids who don't have the patience to wait out the (your present gym) gym's sense of how to progress their athletes.
What that means is a gym can open it's doors and have optional kids in a very short span, and never have lifted a finger to teach them the skills they have as they walked through the door. The gym that prefers to raise up their team from within will need more time because about the best I've seen is 5 levels in a span of 3-4 years, so that's L2, L3, L4, L5, and L6 or 7.
The team development time is extended even further when a nearby club looks like it's a better program and kids leave the home based program for the take what comes program.
Sometime the take what comes program is a great place, but I think that more often it's a place where kids go and receive Candy Land coaching where everything a kid does her first two years is.... wow really great.... and the staff glows about the team's progress.... until the solid base the switching kids brought with them runs out of gas. Then the story changes and the individual kids become "great kids" that just haven't clicked into the next stage, and further down the road "they just don't seem committed the way they used to......
In other words the lack of progress isn't the fault of the receiving gym because all their best kids lose their drive to become great. How, you may ask, can they continue the pattern without people wising up to them. Quite simply they continue to take kids in from other programs that they left...... carrying sufficient quality fundamentals to last a couple of years. So the receiving gym has proof they can coach because they have such an amazing success rate with the younger kids (who've switched to them) and have no control over a child's loss of motivation..... It's total B.S.
I doubt I cleared anything up for you, but perhaps you're better prepared to get to the bottom of what's taking place.
