WAG directors:? grouping teams in meets?

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gymgal

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I was just wondering how meet directors choose which teams to group together when their meet has more than one session for a level - for instance 3 sessions of just level 5s competing. Is there a rhyme/reason to it, as in grouping the traditionally higher scoring teams together, or is more just a numbers game based on how many gymnasts each team has?
 
It is mostly just a number balancing game, but also consider keeping teams with multiple levels competing in the meet as close together as possible (so coaches don't have multiple down sessions between coaching sessions). And I also will try, if possible, to put large teams in a session together and small teams in a session together.
 
Individual clubs also make requests, for example, I have x number if kids that can not compete on certain day or at a certain time.
 
Here we don't have our word to say. It's the federation that organizes the schedule. Last competition I had 9 girls competing, all in the same category, we were split in two sessions. Next week-end, I have 11 girls, all in the same session, but split on two events... For the total number of gymnast par session, I think they try two split them in an equal number.
 
Here we don't have our word to say. It's the federation that organizes the schedule. Last competition I had 9 girls competing, all in the same category, we were split in two sessions. Next week-end, I have 11 girls, all in the same session, but split on two events... For the total number of gymnast par session, I think they try two split them in an equal number.

Are they in different age categories?? Here they tend to put girls of the same level and age category together. Though the argos are usually a huge group and they split them in two, but keeping the gym girls together.
 
Yes, they are all argos. There are about 60 girls competing in this category in our region. So it was a pretty long day last time, about 6 hours of coaching non-stop with excited girls competing for the first time ;) telling them about half of the time: your salute! Do your salute! I think this time, it's another club that get split in two sessions.
 
As wandrewsjr said, my first consideration is all about the numbers. USAG specifies the max number of athletes I can put in a session. Next, if I can keep a session "level pure" I will. It is always better for coaches and judges to focus on one level at a time. I will try to never ever mix compulsories and optionals; it is a recipe for confusion and delay. I do usually combine at least the level 8-9-10s as there usually isn't a large enough number ofeither of those for a whole session. Speaking of delay, I adjust my session numbers to try and keep a session to about 4 hours; I have a spreadsheet tool that I use to predict times based on the type of meet (capital cup, etc). Once I figure out my numbers I then plug in teams. I do give consideration to not splitting teams if at all possible. There is a lot more that goes into building a meet, but this is the gist.

Good Luck.
 
First- follow USAG rules for numbers. Second- try to make it easy on coaches/teams. Third- don't group teams with bad blood on the same squad whenever possible. Fourth- keep your sanity.
 
What everyone else said--balancing the numbers, taking team requests into consideration and we also look at who is coming in from out of town and trying to get all their levels on the same day, if possible. We have never looked at pitting best teams against each other, but our meets aren't huge with "premier" level 10 sessions either.
 
HIJACK ALERT!

Why do large teams get split up at meets? At a recent meet, there were four large teams (10-12 athletes) and six or so smaller teams (1-5 athletes). The larger teams were split up rather than keeping them together. What's the practical purpose there?
 
HIJACK ALERT!

Why do large teams get split up at meets? At a recent meet, there were four large teams (10-12 athletes) and six or so smaller teams (1-5 athletes). The larger teams were split up rather than keeping them together. What's the practical purpose there?

Split up in separate sessions, or split up in rotation squads? The only times I have seen teams of the same level split up in different sessions is when the sessions are split by age groups rather than by teams which is how state competition and some invitationals are run here.
Usually if teams are split up in the rotation, it is because the squad sizes are too small for the large teams to be together. Meet directors try to keep all the squads equal size, otherwise the competition will take more time as you wait on the larger squad to finish. Each meet will either have 4 or 8 squads depending if you have a flight A and B. So a meet with 64 gymnasts will only have room for 8 girls in each squad if you are competing a capitol cup format (with flight A and B) so it would be necessary to split the larger teams up into separate squads.
 
gtm- I was totally unclear there. It was rotation squads. I was mystified because all of the teams could have been kept together without having unequal flights (i.e. each big team stayed together and added one or two small teams to their rotation). I guess it wasn't a big deal, but I like to record scores for the whole team and this made it much tougher.

As far as age, our state runs like that. There is a competition for older Level 4 and younger Level 4.
 
Cbone, (for some reason my return isn't working on this site so bear with my bad formatting) Large gyms can be split up for a variety of reasons, two that I can think of would be ages/sizes; its easier to have similar ages in the same group so adjusting time for bars and vault is minimized. To make even groups to make the rotations smoother; a group of 10 girls is going to take longer on beam than 7 girls on bars and will throw off a rotation. I am sure there are many more reasons but I have never been a meet director, just helped over the years. I'm sure others could give you more reasons.
 
I have often wondered how meets are scheduled too. We had a situation last year at a large invitational that created a problem. There were two gym floors so two sessions happening at any given time. There was a session on one floor with our L5s split into two different rotations (the rotations appeared to be split by age), which had our two coaches split so one could go with each group. Well, that session got WAY behind schedule, but they went ahead on schedule with the other floor, where my dd's level was to compete in the next time slot. There were no coaches available as they were still tied up in the other session. They did the call for the "coaches meeting" and I could see that neither of our coaches could even hear the announcement from the other floor. We only have two coaches, total. All of us stood there not sure what to do. The other teams were warming up and our girls just looked confused. They called the final notice for the meeting and still no coaches from our team. The girls were starting to panic as they were missing their warm-up time. I am sure we got in some sort of trouble for it, but one of the parents from our team grabbed a team warm-up jacket, hopped the fence, and walked over to the "coaches meeting" to get someone to see we had a problem. I never got the whole story, but that parent then started the girls on the warm-up (despite having no idea what she was doing.....she said she just asked the girls what they usually do) while someone official looking tracked down one of our coaches on the other floor. That coach could still not leave as they were finishing the last rotation. In the end, we did not get a coach over to our girls until they went to their starting events. The girls and coaches were very rattled and it showed during the competition. I was not sure who to be mad at...... We did not attend that meet this year. For all I know, we were not invited back.

I can say that our girls are used to having both coaches with them when they compete so when they do this splitting thing, it stresses the girls out. I would imagine others from small gyms have this problem.
 
Cbone- my best guess is that it was a numbers thing. If you have 4 large teams already, they may not have been able to get the small teams distributed among the 4 squads to make the numbers all equal, and since they will not split up a small team (who are sometimes likely to have only one coach) they would need to split the large teams. Our home meet schedule this year was on a VERY tight schedule and so we rearranged squads as we received scratches to try to make our rotation groups as balanced as possible.
 
I have often wondered how meets are scheduled too. We had a situation last year at a large invitational that created a problem. There were two gym floors so two sessions happening at any given time. There was a session on one floor with our L5s split into two different rotations (the rotations appeared to be split by age), which had our two coaches split so one could go with each group. Well, that session got WAY behind schedule, but they went ahead on schedule with the other floor, where my dd's level was to compete in the next time slot. There were no coaches available as they were still tied up in the other session. They did the call for the "coaches meeting" and I could see that neither of our coaches could even hear the announcement from the other floor. We only have two coaches, total. All of us stood there not sure what to do. The other teams were warming up and our girls just looked confused. They called the final notice for the meeting and still no coaches from our team. The girls were starting to panic as they were missing their warm-up time. I am sure we got in some sort of trouble for it, but one of the parents from our team grabbed a team warm-up jacket, hopped the fence, and walked over to the "coaches meeting" to get someone to see we had a problem. I never got the whole story, but that parent then started the girls on the warm-up (despite having no idea what she was doing.....she said she just asked the girls what they usually do) while someone official looking tracked down one of our coaches on the other floor. That coach could still not leave as they were finishing the last rotation. In the end, we did not get a coach over to our girls until they went to their starting events. The girls and coaches were very rattled and it showed during the competition. I was not sure who to be mad at...... We did not attend that meet this year. For all I know, we were not invited back.

I can say that our girls are used to having both coaches with them when they compete so when they do this splitting thing, it stresses the girls out. I would imagine others from small gyms have this problem.

WOW, what a bad situation for the whole team to be in.

You mentioned that the team might have been in trouble for a parent going out there. I had something happen to me that I have always wondered about and your post reminded me of it...

We were at a tiny meet last year. We had to travel for it so our whole team ended up there about half an hour early. (Meaning half an hour before open stretch even began...90 minutes before March In.) The whole team was sitting on the floor just talking with the coaches. Again, Open Stretch had not even started, the judges were not in the building yet, the home team still wasn't even there yet. So they were just hanging out and talking about the upcoming meet and what to expect, etc. I needed to tell one of the coaches something important about my daughter (she would need to take medication at about half way through the meet). So I walked over to the team, pulled the coach aside, said what I had to, and went back to my seat. The whole thing took about 30 seconds. No big deal.

The next day at practice, the coaches asked to speak with me privately. They then told me--quite forcefully--that a parent was NEVER to come on the competition floor for any reason during a meet. If the home gym had wanted to, they could have had our entire team disqualified from the whole meet because of what I had done. And it was only because it was such a small meet and the owners of the host gym and our gym were friends that our team didn't get disqualified. They were PISSED. They didn't exactly yell at me...but they wanted me to know how serious an issue this was.

I was shocked. Again, it was 90 minutes before the official start time of the meet. During the middle of a meet? Absolutely, this makes sense.

Anyone know anything about this? Were they over-reacting? Or is it really that big of a deal?
 
No parent, no matter what is allowed on the competition floor at any time. The only exception to this is the host gym's parents that are working the meet. Even if your child gets hurt, you cannot go on the floor unless you are invited on because the injury is extreme. Yes, it may have been before the meet, there were no other kids there, it does not matter.
 
krisnkids is right. There are exceptions. My mom was allowed to come on the floor when I broke my wrist. In fact I don't think anybody thought about rules when it happened... The father of one of my gymnast is in a wheelchair. He could've taken an elevator to get in the stands but he was allowed to go on the competition floor to watch his daughter. I think that was really great as he never sees her training.

I have no idea what the penalty would be if a parent would come on a competition floor as our meets are individual meets only. Does someone from Quebec province know?
 
The hosting club could also get a sanction violation if the state officials/USAG found out about it. They're probably being tougher on you now because they want to make sure you never do it again--people are typically warned first before anything happens.
 

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