LONG gymnastics session at a meet

[emandelsmom]

My daughter and her teammates were stuck in a long session at one particular meet. The girls had to be there before 10:30am. At 4:00 in the afternoon it was still going on. The girls were starving. We left as soon as team awards began because daughter just couldn't continue on. She was literally shaking from hunger.
Of course, there is no food allowed on the floor. The girls would excuse themselves to the bathroom and sneak up to their parents and beg a bite of food from them. I don't know what time it was finally over-someone said close to 6 that night. There were no breaks given.
We will not be doing this meet again because of the long session. It was the last session of the meet.
My other daughter did the first session of the meet and it was 3 hours long.
During the long session, as one event was finishing you could see the other judges getting up and excusing themselves for a minute to get something to eat and go to the restroom.
My question is how do you handle this? Do you pack a snack in the bag and tell them to discreetly munch on it? This meet took the girls from breakfast time to almost dinner time. We fed her breakfast right before the meet, but that did not hold her through a missed lunch.

 

[AlexsGymmyMom]

I would say the session was very poorly organized. The longest meet my DD has been in was about 5 hours and I thought I was going to lose it! I can't imagine sitting there almost 8 hours. Those poor girls must have been starving! I bet the organizers of that meet will get plenty of feedback from parents and coaches and gym owners so hopefully they will not make the same mistakes in the future!

 

[Deleted member D3987]

wow! that's bad.

 

[bogwoppit]

That is terrible and bordering on dangerous. In that situation I would be a rule breaker, I would pack a non-allergenic, non messy snack in her bag and tell her to discretely eat it when she needed to.

Our judges would simply not agree to a session that long. We seem to max out at 40 girls in one flight per set of judges and equipment. When we send the meet schedule to the judges they can order it to be changed if they think things will be too long. It is very rare for us to be at a meet for more than 3 hours.

 

[emandelsmom]

It was the first year for that meet. As we work on planning the upcoming session, we have talked off and on about how badly run this meet was as far as timing. It was in a wonderful gym and all the girls were given goodie bags with a gatoraid and leo and coupons for food.
I just started wondering how others handled these situations. In my fours years doing this, we have only run into this one meet like this.

 

[gymkat]

Was there a reason for the session being so long? Did the host gym put too many kids in the session, or was there a back-up on one event? There are always some incredibly long sessions at the very beginning of the cycle, but that shouldn't be an issue by now.

I never go to a meet (as a coach, gymnast, or judge) without taking snacks in my bag. I usually take 1-2 PowerBars (doesn't crumble when you eat it) and a water bottle.

 

[emandelsmom]

This was back in November. As we prepare our schedule for the upcoming season I was thinking about this.
Yes, they each had a gym bag with water and snacks but had been told no eating. So they suffered through it.
The session had lots of girls. Each event had 2 groups divided into teams. So group A of teams 1, 2, 3 would warm up and compete the event. Then sit. Group B of Teams X, Y, Z would warmup and compete. Then rotate. Way too many kids. Hope that makes sense.

 

[gymdog]

Was there a reason for the session being so long? Did the host gym put too many kids in the session, or was there a back-up on one event? There are always some incredibly long sessions at the very beginning of the cycle, but that shouldn't be an issue by now.

I never go to a meet (as a coach, gymnast, or judge) without taking snacks in my bag. I usually take 1-2 PowerBars (doesn't crumble when you eat it) and a water bottle.

Yeah, I would have just given the kids a snack. All gyms "don't allow food on the floor." I'm far from a brazen rule breaker but if it's not messy and we're not on actual equipment or mats, then it's unreasonable to expect that in any session that goes through a meal or goes too long, that no one is going to eat. Besides the fact there is never a judges table without food despite those being "on the floor."

I'm not sure why it would go so long, although I did go to a meet that was really long. Huge session, plus although there were two sets of equipment, one was only warm up (in a back room) which meant a touch was needed once on the floor, which in optionals everyone is going to take the maximum touch allowed. This makes no sense to me since they had the equipment and should have just set it up so they could do two flights working on equipment simultaneously, but whatever. It was probably about 6 hours. In your example I'm guessing there was only one set of equipment. Fastest format is to have two sets of competition equipment, one flight warms up (on equipment they'll compete on) while the other competes, and the judges move to the other set of equipment as soon as flight one finishes. Then there's no touch. It sounds like you had two flights on one piece of equipment. Also no touch necessary if you do flights that warm up and compete but still slow.

 

[emandelsmom]

There were several sets of equipment. 3 beams,2 sets of bars, 2 floors, one vault. I think it was just bad planning, but those poor kiddos were whiped out on an Sunday afternoon. We still had to drive 2 hours home afterwards. LOL

 

[Bajanswife]

The team that DD is on went to a meet in Feb where the youngest gymnasts were scheduled in the later afternoon, and then the session ran late .... and the poor things didn't get done until after 11 p.m. (no dinner either!!)! DD wasn't at that meet, she wasn't quite ready yet, and it's a good thing - she never would have been able to safely compete at 8 or 9 at night! When she's tired, she's done with life lol .. she'll just lie down and go to sleep. Adrenalin could take her to a point, but if she had to skip dinner too, she'd crash hard. I hope she never had to experience that, but it's a good reminder for me to pack snacks and find a way to sneak them to her if need beonly in extreme situations of course - I wouldn't break the rules unless I felt her health or safety were at risk).

 

[Sunobo]

When dd is at a meet, she always has a snack bag in her gym bag. It's in our team handbook to do so and states that the snacks must be healthy and not messy. I usually include apple slices, grapes, granola bars, sometimes goldfish crackers. I always gave her more that she needed because her sessions usually fell during the lunch time. For example, she would have a 10:30 open stretch, get up and eat breakfast drive to the meet and awards would usually be done around 3:00.

 

[gymdog]

Honestly just give them the snacks. An apple, carrot sticks, grapes, most whole fruit and vegetables raw are not messy, neither are most energy bars (granola bars can be crumbly but I feel like school age kids should be able to eat a nutrigrain bar without making a huge mess). I would have them stand off equipment, carpet, or harder to clean surfaces but the roped off stands/concession area of most meet set ups in gyms is not a different surface than if you stand out of the way of their equipment and mats. So I would make sure we pick up our trash, but I don't see anything special about those surfaces. If someone said something about it I would say it has been so many hours and I am going to make sure they clean up all the trash. Or I would say show me where I can take them and we will go stand there...and eat our carrots...which aren't going to leave any mess whatsoever... But no one has ever watched me supervise a kid eating and said anything. The only thing that bothers me is seeing kids eat and drink on the actual gymnastics floor (spring floor) during awards - Goldfish crackers DO leave crumbs. That's clearly inappropriate to me but people do it anyway. If I felt like it really mattered to someone I would not do it but as it is I don't think eating something non-messy and cleaning up after yourself in an appropriate space is like a big taboo of gymnastics meets.

 

[gymjourneymom]

Honestly just give them the snacks. An apple, carrot sticks, grapes, most whole fruit and vegetables raw are not messy, neither are most energy bars (granola bars can be crumbly but I feel like school age kids should be able to eat a nutrigrain bar without making a huge mess). I would have them stand off equipment, carpet, or harder to clean surfaces but the roped off stands/concession area of most meet set ups in gyms is not a different surface than if you stand out of the way of their equipment and mats. So I would make sure we pick up our trash, but I don't see anything special about those surfaces. If someone said something about it I would say it has been so many hours and I am going to make sure they clean up all the trash. Or I would say show me where I can take them and we will go stand there...and eat our carrots...which aren't going to leave any mess whatsoever... But no one has ever watched me supervise a kid eating and said anything. The only thing that bothers me is seeing kids eat and drink on the actual gymnastics floor (spring floor) during awards - Goldfish crackers DO leave crumbs. That's clearly inappropriate to me but people do it anyway. If I felt like it really mattered to someone I would not do it but as it is I don't think eating something non-messy and cleaning up after yourself in an appropriate space is like a big taboo of gymnastics meets.

I totally agree with this post gymdog. This is how our coaches handle this type of situation also. These kids are often getting up very early for travel & sometimes don't eat well the morning of a meet due to nerves. Then they go out & physically exert themselves to the max. They NEED some nourishment, when a meet drags on & on. As long as the snacks are healthy, the kids are supervised & all is clean & tidy when finished, no one has ever given our team a problem. And as far as running meets, our gym has never complained when coaches let their kids snack at our meets either.

 

[MamaofEnS]

I don't know if the meet was USA gymnastics sanctioned or not, but USAG definitely has rules about how long sessions are allowed to last. This sounds like a dangerous situation, and should be reported.

MamaofEnS

 

[emandelsmom]

It was a USAG sanctioned meet with the state's chair judging the meet. We have since forth made the decison to compete in other states and stay out of our own. We will be going to Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Memphis, Birmingham, and Mobile. The meets in these cities are better run and organized.

 

[cher062]

My daughter and her teammates were stuck in a long session at one particular meet. The girls had to be there before 10:30am. At 4:00 in the afternoon it was still going on. The girls were starving. We left as soon as team awards began because daughter just couldn't continue on. She was literally shaking from hunger.
Of course, there is no food allowed on the floor. The girls would excuse themselves to the bathroom and sneak up to their parents and beg a bite of food from them. I don't know what time it was finally over-someone said close to 6 that night. There were no breaks given.
We will not be doing this meet again because of the long session. It was the last session of the meet.
My other daughter did the first session of the meet and it was 3 hours long.
During the long session, as one event was finishing you could see the other judges getting up and excusing themselves for a minute to get something to eat and go to the restroom.
My question is how do you handle this? Do you pack a snack in the bag and tell them to discreetly munch on it? This meet took the girls from breakfast time to almost dinner time. We fed her breakfast right before the meet, but that did not hold her through a missed lunch.

I've never had a meet where my DD didn't have a full meals worth of food in her gym bag. usually there is a place for them to store their bag in a corner of the competition area and gymnasts go there to eat their snacks and food. That is where they store their grips and other stuff like that too. I've never been at a meet where there wasn't an area like that.

My dd always has a sandwich, a lunchable, 2 gatoraids, a water bottle, and at least 2 snack items (like granola bars, yogarts, etc.)

 

[emandelsmom]

I've never had a meet where my DD didn't have a full meals worth of food in her gym bag. usually there is a place for them to store their bag in a corner of the competition area and gymnasts go there to eat their snacks and food. That is where they store their grips and other stuff like that too. I've never been at a meet where there wasn't an area like that.

My dd always has a sandwich, a lunchable, 2 gatoraids, a water bottle, and at least 2 snack items (like granola bars, yogarts, etc.)

WOW!! That is awesome! We have never seen that done. Gym bags and grips etc are dragged with them between each rotation. There is usually not a snack area unless we are at a big out of state meet. The in-state meets usually only allow food in the stands or the parking lot.

 

[cher062]

WOW!! That is awesome! We have never seen that done. Gym bags and grips etc are dragged with them between each rotation. There is usually not a snack area unless we are at a big out of state meet. The in-state meets usually only allow food in the stands or the parking lot.

Its usually in a corner of the gym that isn't being used for the meet like the tumble track area or where the boys equipment is. Also many of the gyms are small and really don't have room for all the bags to be dragged around from one area to another, there is just enough room for bodies. So if they are done with their event they can go over to their bags and have a snack if they need it.

I've been at 2 meets that were out of state where they actually have a table set up to sit at.

 

[emandelsmom]

This meet in particular was packed with no empty spaces for things like bags. They literally had bags in their laps while sitting. Compete. Come back and bag is right back in lap. Like I said, it was the first year for this meet, so I assume some quirks are being worked out. From the stands to the opposite wall, were mats. No empty corners. The whole gym was covered.