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Anonymous (bd56)
My daughter is a compulsory gymnast at a gym that was really good for her last year and the year before. Our state competes in winter with states in the spring. The gym had some growing pains this summer and absorbed a bunch of girls from other gyms expecting that they would add coaches and workout times. However, fewer families than anticipated chose the homeschool track this year and some coach shuffling means that her workout group is 3x as large as it was last year with the same number of coaches, hours and rotations.
As parents we didn’t have a lot of transparency into group size or how practices would be run so I wasn’t worried until December. Now during meet season it’s really obvious that most of the girls just aren’t getting sufficient time or coaching- there is so much waiting around and the coaches are focused on making the very best girls better and trying to help the girls at the very bottom.
They’ve defaulted to splitting practice into two groups- one is ~4 girls who are focused on adding .10 here and there, and the other group of 16 is all over the place. Some are missing skills and still scratching events and some are like my daughter and just need more reps to be really solid. Except that she’s been put in the “missing skills and scratching events” group, which means she’s stuck doing whatever drill or mat set up is put together for the weakest girl in the group. No one in her subgroup gets to practice full routines, flip vaults, or run floor on hard floor until the night before meets. Often it’s accompanied by the coach making them show a routine or else they’ll have to scratch…except they haven’t been practicing routines or skills since the last meet! It’s an insane amount of pressure without the coaching to match.
My daughter is noticing the subgroup that is getting all the reps and attention and freaking out. I’m trying not to make a big deal of it and I know it’s just compulsories. I also know that I don’t really have a lot of capital to complain because my daughter is not one of the ones getting big scores and on the podium. It feels like the coaches have written most of these girls off or that they’re even intentionally leaving them behind to remedy the group size in the long term.
Is this just how compulsories work at bigger gyms? She’s always been in small groups with very even ability levels. I don’t know if I need to start looking for another gym or if I’m overreacting and this is to be expected.
My heart is breaking for her- I don’t usually watch practice but did yesterday and it was hard to watch her in the less-favored group.
As parents we didn’t have a lot of transparency into group size or how practices would be run so I wasn’t worried until December. Now during meet season it’s really obvious that most of the girls just aren’t getting sufficient time or coaching- there is so much waiting around and the coaches are focused on making the very best girls better and trying to help the girls at the very bottom.
They’ve defaulted to splitting practice into two groups- one is ~4 girls who are focused on adding .10 here and there, and the other group of 16 is all over the place. Some are missing skills and still scratching events and some are like my daughter and just need more reps to be really solid. Except that she’s been put in the “missing skills and scratching events” group, which means she’s stuck doing whatever drill or mat set up is put together for the weakest girl in the group. No one in her subgroup gets to practice full routines, flip vaults, or run floor on hard floor until the night before meets. Often it’s accompanied by the coach making them show a routine or else they’ll have to scratch…except they haven’t been practicing routines or skills since the last meet! It’s an insane amount of pressure without the coaching to match.
My daughter is noticing the subgroup that is getting all the reps and attention and freaking out. I’m trying not to make a big deal of it and I know it’s just compulsories. I also know that I don’t really have a lot of capital to complain because my daughter is not one of the ones getting big scores and on the podium. It feels like the coaches have written most of these girls off or that they’re even intentionally leaving them behind to remedy the group size in the long term.
Is this just how compulsories work at bigger gyms? She’s always been in small groups with very even ability levels. I don’t know if I need to start looking for another gym or if I’m overreacting and this is to be expected.
My heart is breaking for her- I don’t usually watch practice but did yesterday and it was hard to watch her in the less-favored group.
