WAG Team parent meeting comments regarding tuition - any insight

[sewgood]

Team is a loss leader. Just like when your grocery store has a BOGO sale on laundry detergent. Do they make anything on the detergent? No, but it provides an advertising/marketing opportunity to keep awareness of their store relevant. And, once you are in there, you'll end up buying milk, toilet paper, bananas and chicken (or whatever). Advertising, marketing and public relations is in investment that (if done well) results in a good ROI, either directly, or in the case of loss leaders, indirectly.

Having a team, especially a successful team that wins things and graduates kids who get college scholarships, is a marketing strategy that pulls in more rec families (i.e., the profit generating customers). You take the loss on team in order to make more money overall.

All that said, I don't see a problem letting the team parents know that is the business model and it's pretty standard across the industry. Now if it was harped on constantly or was served with a heavy helping of guilt trip, that's different. But explaining it once a year, especially when new parents are present (who are undoubtedly experiencing a little sticker shock during that first year), doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

 

[sewgood]

Tuition has never been a complaint of mine as that always seems like a good deal for the quantity of training hours involved. I'm actually more annoyed by all of the requirements to work at meets and mandatory fundraisers when my out of pocket booster obligation is higher than other gyms that don't force their parents to do this stuff - aka gyms w/o a booster! The real conversation I'd like to have is with the person or persons who come up w/ those booster numbers and requirements because I think they are doing something really wrong. Maybe they could explain why it's so high and then we can stop low key whining about it all.

Well, if the gym hosts meets, someone has to work them. I think most gyms have this requirement for team parents. How many hours are you required to work per year?

 

[Gymmommy71]

Well, if the gym hosts meets, someone has to work them. I think most gyms have this requirement for team parents. How many hours are you required to work per year?

We work 2 meets - there are about 20% of families that don't show. The ones who work get nothing extra for working them, and the ones who don't have nothing happen to them. Many of the deadbeat families have returned this season and will probably no-show again, which is going to be very frustrating to watch yet again as we are scrubbing mats and doing heavy lifting. On top of all this we pay a very expensive booster assessment that is one of the highest in the area (a lot more than other local gyms that don't have a booster organization or host meets). I have no idea why it is so much money - I honestly wonder if the meets are even making money and we are just working them for the "PR" that comes from hosting a meet.

 

[B.Gold]

Okay, devil's advocate, and hypothetical

You've been at three gyms, so hypothetically you've not paid "in" to your current gym for any more than what?... a year or two? Should those families who have been loyal customers for a decade+ and paid into "the system" for a looooooong time, and proved their loyalty, get better service/coaching or preferential treatment? or should the "better" workout groups\coaching be selected strictly by talent/skills even if a higher level participant, who just walked in off the streets, has paid into the competing program for years, and has only a couple years of competition left..?

 

[sewgood]

We work 2 meets - there are about 20% of families that don't show. The ones who work get nothing extra for working them, and the ones who don't have nothing happen to them. Many of the deadbeat families have returned this season and will probably no-show again, which is going to be very frustrating to watch yet again as we are scrubbing mats and doing heavy lifting. On top of all this we pay a very expensive booster assessment that is one of the highest in the area (a lot more than other local gyms that don't have a booster organization or host meets). I have no idea why it is so much money - I honestly wonder if the meets are even making money and we are just working them for the "PR" that comes from hosting a meet.

We have a required number of hours, you have to check in and check out when you show up to volunteer. If you don't complete the required number of hours, you get charged $20/hour that you didn't complete. So, if you didn't do 10 hours, you would be assessed $200 at the end of your season. Obviously, the honor system isn't working at your gym, so maybe that's away to help it. Or, if you want to keep it positive, maybe if you do X amount of hours, you get Y taken off that huge booster club fee.

 

[GymCMLA]

Okay, devil's advocate, and hypothetical

You've been at three gyms, so hypothetically you've not paid "in" to your current gym for any more than what?... a year or two? Should those families who have been loyal customers for a decade+ and paid into "the system" for a looooooong time, and proved their loyalty, get better service/coaching or preferential treatment? or should the "better" workout groups\coaching be selected strictly by talent/skills even if a higher level participant, who just walked in off the streets, has paid into the competing program for years, and has only a couple years of competition left..?

my situation-
well, I have 4 kids and have paid in about 21 years (and counting with the youngest) Granted much of that was at the old gym (2 years before we moved long ago and the last 2 years at our current places)

If you say that paying in for a long time should get better coaching etc, then the old gym should have "bought me out" and paid me back the money I paid in when they forced the boys to leave by folding the program completely and when I had to remove DD for emotional abuse. Then I could have taken that "pay in" with me and given it to the new gym. Obviously my "pay in" funded the athletes in the years before us, just as their "pay in" funded the cohort before them. I do have kids paying in while my olders are on team now, but without multiple kids in the sport, that can't happen.
I would suggest that no one shows up as a high hours althlete without paying in somewhere....even if it was in a different gym.

 

[Gymmommy71]

We have a required number of hours, you have to check in and check out when you show up to volunteer. If you don't complete the required number of hours, you get charged $20/hour that you didn't complete. So, if you didn't do 10 hours, you would be assessed $200 at the end of your season. Obviously, the honor system isn't working at your gym, so maybe that's away to help it. Or, if you want to keep it positive, maybe if you do X amount of hours, you get Y taken off that huge booster club fee.

We've asked about that in meetings - the wonderful 501c3 prohibits this allegedly. Only thing we were told they could possibly do is not allow non-participators back the next year - recently saw a team list, guess what - the 3 I know that directly affected my team (timers on events) and basically caused others to work double shifts (in addition to their not helping w/ the pre and post meet cleaning duties) are all back again :/.

I wish it worked like your gym - I really do.

 

[raenndrops]

We work 2 meets - there are about 20% of families that don't show. The ones who work get nothing extra for working them, and the ones who don't have nothing happen to them. Many of the deadbeat families have returned this season and will probably no-show again, which is going to be very frustrating to watch yet again as we are scrubbing mats and doing heavy lifting. On top of all this we pay a very expensive booster assessment that is one of the highest in the area (a lot more than other local gyms that don't have a booster organization or host meets). I have no idea why it is so much money - I honestly wonder if the meets are even making money and we are just working them for the "PR" that comes from hosting a meet.

We don't have a booster club. We host meets and all families are required to work the meets. What HC does is have a variety of ways for adults to help (set up, concession stand for 2 hours, coaches an judges hospitality breakfast, hospitality lunch, hospitality dinner, score table per session, music/announcer per session, awards per session, tear down). We also have team girls work a session as runner/ flasher or timer.
If a gymnast (and family) doesn't sign up to work a session, then she will have to work the session she was supposed to compete (which gives the parent time to also work - since they won't have to worry about watching their gymnast compete).
It works well for us

 

[Sasha]

Really imagine if everytime I went in to hand them the check. I rambled on. Boy you don't know how hard it is to pay you on time. This week we had to juggle paying the mortgage, the orthodonist, you, the groceries. And in fact we had to push some bills to the next pay period. Lucky it wasn't you right.

LOL!.

It's funny because there's tempting truth there. Admittedly, sometimes I do feel like telling the gym that (!!) Because Life is expensive, darn it!

(but of course I don't!)

 

[Gymmommy71]

my situation-
well, I have 4 kids and have paid in about 21 years (and counting with the youngest) Granted much of that was at the old gym (2 years before we moved long ago and the last 2 years at our current places)

If you say that paying in for a long time should get better coaching etc, then the old gym should have "bought me out" and paid me back the money I paid in when they forced the boys to leave by folding the program completely and when I had to remove DD for emotional abuse. Then I could have taken that "pay in" with me and given it to the new gym. Obviously my "pay in" funded the athletes in the years before us, just as their "pay in" funded the cohort before them. I do have kids paying in while my olders are on team now, but without multiple kids in the sport, that can't happen.
I would suggest that no one shows up as a high hours althlete without paying in somewhere....even if it was in a different gym.

And people that show up as high hours atheltes instantly give the new gym the exact benefit that the gym is hoping to gain from any team athelte that they invest in - success at high level meets for marketing, big skills to showcase, etc.

So actually, any kid who switches gyms at the higher levels does come to their new gym w/ a "buy out" that they bring from the old gym as equity - that equity is their skills .

This is why most gyms welcome high-scoring optional athletes - they don't care at all that they didn't pay into "their system" for years - they are a bird in the hand when it comes to showcasing, where all their numerous compulsaries are still just birds in a bush.

 

[gymmomtotwo]

This seems to be an odd topic for a parent meeting, and seems better suited to those with individual complaints about costs. When you join preteam, they are pretty up front about the future costs of the sport. The gym doesn't try to justify it's tuition at all to my knowledge. It costs what it costs. The things that annoy me are things like unnecessary mandatory tshirts (for the season, for state), $300 Leo's for compulsories, $25 chalk fees. It's all nice and fun to have bouquets of flowers at state, gifts for the girls, pricey team bonding activities etc, but geez aren't we spending enough already.? Tuition, travel costs,and such thing are fine, but sometimes I feel like the gym thinks our wallets are bottomless and adds on all these unnecessary extras. Off topic a bit, but oh well.

 

[Aussie_coach]

It would be very rare to see a gym make a profit directly from their team. The team kids usually have the most expensive coaches and if we charged them the same rate per hour as we did a 1 hour a week kid, very few would be able to or inclined to pay these fees.

The Team plays an important role in the financial success of the gym. The younger gymnasts look up to them and want to be like them, which keeps them in the gym paying those higher per hour fees.

As a gym the key is to work out how many team kids you can take without turning away the red kids you might need in order to make the gym financially successful. Then you set your standards for accepting team members based on that.

My gym is very large, so the percentage of kids selected for Team would be much lower than in a gym with less kids and more space. So the standards we set to select team kids is higher.

 

[CoachMeg]

I don't know why the coach would ever say that to parents voluntarily - meaning with no prior complaints.

However, as others have said, team is not really a money maker. At our gym, if you break down the rec. class cost per hour, it comes out to about $20/hour, whereas the team kids per hour is about $5/hour. I've heard our business manager before say that 4 team kids equals 1 rec. kid ($$ wise). We do pay our employees well, even rec. staff. I think we start hourly wages at $10/hr, but our team coaches make MUCH more. And we have 2 full time team coaches.

A gym down the road from us is strictly recreational gymnastics/tumbling/ninja and special events. I would be willing to be that their yearly profit exceeds ours by quite a bit as we are mainly known as a competitive team gym - WAG, Excel, tumbling, and soon MAG. Our gym stays in business because of our rec. class kids. HOWEVER, we set out to be a team gym, so our owners knew going in that this was not going to be a huge money maker. It is what it is. We would never repeatedly harp on parents about this though, we knew what we were getting into.

However, if someone DOES complain about monthly tuition, we don't hesitate to tell them the facts

 

[Aussie_coach]

Is $10 per hour considered a good wage in the US? Our dollar values aren't that different and we don't even pay our 14 year old coaches a wage that low. Adult coaches are at least $25-$30 per hour.

 

[GymDad9.9]

Is $10 per hour considered a good wage in the US? Our dollar values aren't that different and we don't even pay our 14 year old coaches a wage that low. Adult coaches are at least $25-$30 per hour.

In many parts of the country that would not be a good wage. It is fairly close (little higher than) to the minimum wage allowed by law in the respective states.

 

[notthatmom]

Is $10 per hour considered a good wage in the US? Our dollar values aren't that different and we don't even pay our 14 year old coaches a wage that low. Adult coaches are at least $25-$30 per hour.

The federal wage is lower than $10.....
It's also rare to employ 14 year olds, 16 is the legal minimum here without a work permit

 

[notthatmom]

And actually, I just looked at the conversion rate, $10 Australian is equivalent to about $7.50 American, which is on the low end of min wage so it's pretty comparable it seems

 

[skschlag]

The federal wage is lower than $10.....
It's also rare to employ 14 year olds, 16 is the legal minimum here without a work permit

My son coaches at 14. He does not make $10 an hour.

 

[CoachMeg]

Is $10 per hour considered a good wage in the US? Our dollar values aren't that different and we don't even pay our 14 year old coaches a wage that low. Adult coaches are at least $25-$30 per hour.

In the State that I live in, $8.25 is the minimum wage. So the starting hourly wage at our gym is $1.75/hr more than that. HOWEVER, most of the employees that make this are high-schoolers. Working at 14 is very unheard of, at least in the state I live in. You have to have a workers permit to be able to work at age 15...and then I believe you can only work a max of 9 hours per week.

Like I said, most of our employees make much more than this depending on their experience and time at the gym. But starting out, $10 is common and to me, fair.

 

[Iwannabemargo]

limited hours working here from 14,

Minimum wage:
under 18 - £3.87 ($5)
18-20 £ 5.30 ($6.87)
21-24 £ 6.70 ($8.68)
25+ £ 7.20 ($ 9.33)

Most gyms locally pay between £7-12 per hour for qualified coaches, depending on qualifications ($9-15)