I recently started a thread on the site about deviating from our current team system and moving to an “A” team / “B” team model. This…of course…immediately brought in two very different schools of thought.
Here is the original thread:
Starting a High Performance Team Track (“A” Team vs. “B” Team)
A couple days later…the following thread was created by beamer:
Lament of the B-streamer
As these two threads progress you will hear the two different opinions and everyone’s reasons for them. If you don’t want to read all of it then skip to this:
Lament of the B-streamer: Post #11
And my response:
Lament of the B-streamer: Post #13
In post #11 emorymom states…
If you want to maintain the A teamers’ interest and find out who in your B teams will ultimately be a great optional gymnast, you need to scrap your old system and have this system:
The minimum number of hours for Level X are Y. Gymnasts may choose to practice up to Z hours. After each competitive season, gymnasts will be considered for re-leveling.
If you PUSH the extremely TALENTED so hard by giving them a huge number of required hours at a young age, you are likely to lose them. Also, the point of being extremely talented is that they don’t NEED as many hours to progress as the less apt and since this is a marathon not a sprint, you might see that they ultimately acheive more if you are not pushing them through the levels so fast, but letting them enjoy their talent and other things, and choose major commitment when they are older.
On the other side, if you continue to force the kids who don’t show early talent, but have extremely high commitment, into extremely low-hours programs, you are going to see them not reach their potential. If you have a girl who is a 10yo first year L4 and you only let her practice 7 hours a week, is it going to be a shock for you that she takes 3 years at L4 since she’s also going to be growing 5 inches a year during that period? Heck, she probably needs the 7 hours a week just to maintain skills during a growth spurt.
Gymnastics needs to pay more attention to swimming.
This concept (in red above) completely addresses my cons with the “A” team / “B” team system:
- “A” team gymnasts may be pushed to hard at a young age and driven right out of the sport.
- Many “B” team gymnasts have better work ethic and develop into very talented gymnasts.
The problem is that it does not address one of my pros for the ”A” team / “B” team system:
- The “A” team would be the “perfect” group…selected by everything you could imagine (age, body type, skill, etc.)
Yes…yes…I said “perfect”…I am a dreamer. The fact is…nothing is perfect. I would set out to create this “perfect” little group and run into nothing but issues. I’d probably start with my 8 or 10 little hot shots and go too TOPs on them…I’d realize that they weren’t perfect or that I made an error coaching…developed some skill wrong. What to do then…I would probably end up eliminating all of my dreamed perfection. One by one I would find a something wrong with each of them and eliminate them all…or all but one? That is not what I want. I don’t want to be stuck with 5 – 7 year old gymnasts for the rest of my life because I refuse to work with anyone that is not perfect. I don’t want to keep selecting new teams until I find the “one”.
Here it is again…the new system:
The minimum number of hours for Level X are Y. Gymnasts may choose to practice up to Z hours. After each competitive season, gymnasts will be considered for re-leveling.
What are everyone’s thoughts on this? What type of team system do you run? What could make it better?