Women XCEL Sapphire

[PeanutsMom]

Will XCEL Sapphire be rolling out to the other regions after the pilot season? Also, is there any discussion of having XCEL post season meets like Westerns or Nationals for the upper levels?

My kiddo switched from JO to XCEL this year and is Diamond. She is really loving the program and the freedom of the program. Her goals now include learning as many new skills as possible over the next few years as Diamond is currently the highest level in our region. Without the pressure to make 8/9/10 etc. she just feels free to do what comes most naturally (like her cat leap, aerial, back handspring on beam which she can't do for several seasons in JO). She would love to eventually go sapphire, but it isn't available.

Yeah for making XCEL accessible to more kids and giving them another pathway to stay in gymnastics.

 

[Coach Kate]

We really hope so at our gym! We have a number of young diamonds and only do Xcel, in fact a lot of our kids are here because they didn't enjoy DP. But we're sitting here with a 12 year old diamond, a 14 year old who won state and regional titles her first year in a level, and two 12 year olds in platinum who will be beyond ready by next season. And we've got a 15 year old diamond who has already been in this level 4 years, won state AA the last several, regional champ. We would love to see more opportunities for these kids. They're still upgrading but there's also a pretty big skill level spread on the diamond team at this point, where some of them are just trying to get 10.0 starts on every event, and others are pushing things to the max.

 

[PeanutsMom]

We really hope so at our gym! We have a number of young diamonds and only do Xcel, in fact a lot of our kids are here because they didn't enjoy DP. But we're sitting here with a 12 year old diamond, a 14 year old who won state and regional titles her first year in a level, and two 12 year olds in platinum who will be beyond ready by next season. And we've got a 15 year old diamond who has already been in this level 4 years, won state AA the last several, regional champ. We would love to see more opportunities for these kids. They're still upgrading but there's also a pretty big skill level spread on the diamond team at this point, where some of them are just trying to get 10.0 starts on every event, and others are pushing things to the max.

That’s what I love. The athletes have so much freedom in each level. My daughter switched to xcel after some pretty serious back injuries and recovery. She can’t do back or front walkovers anymore so adjusting beam for level 7 was getting rough, but she can do side aerials on beam. However that isn’t allowed in DP until level 9. The switch just made sense for her.