WAG Random, possibly naive question about assessing program quality

[mom2newgymnast]

FWIW, at dd's gym 5 of the 6 level 10's that competed at the State meet were home grown. They usually have more level 10's, but 6 graduated within the last year and went on to do college gymnastics and there were a few that were out with injury. We do have girls that join as optionals too, but a lot come up from compulsories. However in my dd's group, which will be competing level 7 next season, only 2 are from her original level 2 group. The rest joined from other gyms at different times along the way, including 3 girls that joined in the last couple of months from local gyms.

 

[gymbeam]

This is probably very rare, but some gyms (like ours) have satellite gyms by different names. If you didn’t know that and only looked at My MeetScores you may be counting kids as transplants who were actually home grown. Again, I’m sure it’s a very small number of places where you would see this, but just thought I’d mention it since it’s the case at our gym.

 

[ayyyrial]

If you have a gymnast who thinks she will eventually be trying to compete all the way up through level 9/10 and you want to pick one gym for the whole journey, you want to know a) the gym has the capacity to support high-level gymnasts AND b) the gym has the capacity to get many lower-level gymnasts to a high level. From my experience coaching, I've found there are coaches who are great with high-level skills but not necessarily good at teaching the intermediate gymnasts around levels 3-5. There are also coaches who are awesome with strong basics and conditioning at levels 3-5 but don't have a lot of technical knowledge about higher-level skills. Some programs are also more focused on developing one or the other - and many programs split up the coaching staff and practice times so the compulsories/optionals divide can be pretty palpable.

If you see a program where there are a lot of successful optionals who have been there for a long time, that suggests that the gym is working out well for both lower and higher levels - actually, what it really suggests is that the lower-level program was working out well 5-10 years ago, since that's when the current high-level gymnasts would have been in the compulsory program. And not every level 3 gymnast is going to have the skill, the resources, and the desire to make it up to level 9 or 10 - and attracting higher-level gymnasts from other gyms shouldn't reflect poorly. So looking at the number of "home-grown" optionals doesn't tell you exactly what you might want to know, but it's something to look at.

 

[3rd_time_around]

Our gym has a very strong and successful compulsory program with rarely any gymnast repeating a compulsory level, as well as a strong and successful optional program. But, our optional levels do have many non-"home grown" gymnasts that have joined, some even coming in as level 10s. I don't think having homegrown gymnasts as the majority of your optional program really matters in assessing the success of the gym as a whole. Check out the scores, check out the progression of gymnasts--do they stay on one level for 2- 3 years or move up each year? Are they successful if they only spend 1 year on each compulsory level or skip levels? Are they consistent? Are they represented well at regionals and nationals?--and go visit the gym and watch a practice, talk to other parents there, let your gymnast try it out.