Coaches appear to think my daughter should be done with competitive gymnastics. I am struggling a bit to accept this as she works super hard, has been making significant progress and got a >36 AA score at Sectionals (9th of 18 in her age group).
She is 9 years old and just finished her first competitive JO season. She has been training 8 hours a week (4 hours x 2 days a week) for the last 10 months and was doing 4 hours a week on pre-team for the year prior. Throughout the season she has struggled with consistency on vault and scratched in one early meet. Her handstand to vertical is still inconsistent and her roundoff isn't great.
These were her meet scores from the season.
The message from her coaches at the end of season meeting was that she is a super hard worker but just isn't progressing fast enough. They aren't confident she'll get the key Level 3 skills she needs by next competitive season (ROBHS and handstand on beam) and say they want to make sure she doesn't get frustrated by continuing to struggle vs teammates who may pick up new skills faster. Their proposal is that she join an in-house competitive team that trains only 2 hours a week. They say that Xcel also requires skills that they think she'll struggle with as well so they don't recommend that either. She wanted the option to advance to Level 3 and isn't interested in the in-house team. Girls moving up to Level 3 will move up to 12 hours a week this summer. I am struggling to understand how the coaches already know that she won't be able to succeed 8 months in advance of next year's season.
Any advice in this situation? Does this advice from her coaches seem reasonable? Should she just call it a day and go play some other sports?
She is 9 years old and just finished her first competitive JO season. She has been training 8 hours a week (4 hours x 2 days a week) for the last 10 months and was doing 4 hours a week on pre-team for the year prior. Throughout the season she has struggled with consistency on vault and scratched in one early meet. Her handstand to vertical is still inconsistent and her roundoff isn't great.
These were her meet scores from the season.
The message from her coaches at the end of season meeting was that she is a super hard worker but just isn't progressing fast enough. They aren't confident she'll get the key Level 3 skills she needs by next competitive season (ROBHS and handstand on beam) and say they want to make sure she doesn't get frustrated by continuing to struggle vs teammates who may pick up new skills faster. Their proposal is that she join an in-house competitive team that trains only 2 hours a week. They say that Xcel also requires skills that they think she'll struggle with as well so they don't recommend that either. She wanted the option to advance to Level 3 and isn't interested in the in-house team. Girls moving up to Level 3 will move up to 12 hours a week this summer. I am struggling to understand how the coaches already know that she won't be able to succeed 8 months in advance of next year's season.
Any advice in this situation? Does this advice from her coaches seem reasonable? Should she just call it a day and go play some other sports?