- Mar 4, 2008
- 15
- 0
I took my daughter to the state meet this weekend. It was a disaster. We got up early and drove 4 hours to be there on time. All the other girls were on time as well. The only one who wasn't was the coach. Warm-up started at 11:30am, with introductions at noon and events beginning right after. The girls have been told numerous times not to begin warming up without their coach present, so they were afraid to start stretching. The coach arrived after noon. A parent had to go to the coach meeting and get the info, and a coach from another team organized my daughter's group for the presentation. Needless to say, they weren't ready to compete and the meet was a mess. Little girls have enough to worry about without having to wonder if they'll be disqualified for having no coach. And even level 5's need a lot of warm-up.
I notice other coaches having the girls stretch or work on parts of routines every spare minute they're not competing. Their warm-up times on the apparati seem to be used efficiently. My daughter was upset because she only got to try two kips before she had to compete on bars. She just wasn't ready.
I guess I'm not sure how angry to be. This isn't typical, is it? It's not the first meet where this has happened. The coach stated she thought the start time was later, so it wasn't due to an unforeseeable situation.
The good news is that for as bad as it went overall, my daughter got a 7th place medal on one event, which made her happy. At 8, she had no pretensions of being any better yesterday, luckily. It's hard when she was much better last year before we moved here.
Anyone else have frustrations? There's not much to be done but leave the gym, which we were planning to do anyway for financial reasons, but this kind of cemented things for us.
I notice other coaches having the girls stretch or work on parts of routines every spare minute they're not competing. Their warm-up times on the apparati seem to be used efficiently. My daughter was upset because she only got to try two kips before she had to compete on bars. She just wasn't ready.
I guess I'm not sure how angry to be. This isn't typical, is it? It's not the first meet where this has happened. The coach stated she thought the start time was later, so it wasn't due to an unforeseeable situation.
The good news is that for as bad as it went overall, my daughter got a 7th place medal on one event, which made her happy. At 8, she had no pretensions of being any better yesterday, luckily. It's hard when she was much better last year before we moved here.
Anyone else have frustrations? There's not much to be done but leave the gym, which we were planning to do anyway for financial reasons, but this kind of cemented things for us.