Teammates leaving

[spokanegymmom]

I can't believe how many girls left. How big is your optional team?

[hunde2]

I don't know how many Level 7's we had but there were 19 Level 8-10 at States.

[vmom]

It must be in the water... 3 girls left my daughter's gym too, for another team that seems to sweep the titles at the compulsary levels. Grass is greener situation? Maybe. It also occurred right about the time the girls found out if they were moving up levels or not. Funny though, the girls on our team took a ton of titles at the compulsary levels and the optional levels. So really how much greener can the grass be?

One girl left unannounced. The other two came in to get their stuff, bawling and saying how much they didn't want to go. Then all the girls started bawling too. It was kind of awful. But, I guess an important life lesson was learned.

I can only think of two girls who outright quit. I know one just wanted to try other things. I'm not sure about the other.

[gym monkeys mom]

Kids leaving is one of the constant happenings at the end of every season in gymnastics it seems. We recently had 3 new gyms open by our club in the last year. One is run well the other 2 it remains to be seen. We have lost a high number of kids in 2 seasaons to these clubs and other sports. Some are happy and some are miserable and wish they never left.The grass ISN'T always greener it seems when you get there. We have also lost some of our kids to other sports. Gymnastics is a tough, time consuming sport and lets face it hard on the whole family. We love the sport at our house but, for some it is too much. What we have learned from all this as a parent of a 2nd year L7 is as team mates come and go, you need to be doing the sport because you love it! My DD has some awsome teamates now and is content and happy. We are at a low pressure club and our optionals only work out 14 hours a week. This is ok with us. It also seems t produce less burn out but some are not happy with this as it doen't always produce #1 gymansts and people move on. Sorry for the ramble. Hope some of this helps.

[gymgirl0805's Mom]

we've had that happen the last 2 months or so.. we've lost 10 girls. it's crazy!! they're all going to a new gym down the street. so far they all really like it but either way, we're staying put!

[MdGymMom01]

This is also true in the All Star Cheer world. So many people leave at the end of the season to either go to another gym, take time off just to tumble, quit entirely or switch sports (like in my dd's case :-)!) It is also very common for coaches to leave gyms and go to other gyms and if the coaches (especially the tumbling coaches) leave, then a lot of the cheerleaders follow because they will "only tumble with that coach". Our gym we left this past year is going through a pretty major exodus (they are a pretty major gym). A good portion of the coaches left (tumble and cheer) and many of the kids left too. But, then again they have a lot of newcomers there coming from other gyms, so it is kind of like musical gyms!!!

I think it has a lot to do with people just getting restless, frustrated and impatient. People want to see immediate results and with gymnastics, it is often a slow (sometimes slower than you would like it to be) and steady ride. The grass often does appear to be greener on the other side, because you always want what you don't have, but after you experience "the other side" it doesn't seem so green afterall.

Patience and persevearance is the key to gymnastics. :-)

[Megley]

We had a number of gymnasts leave at the end of the season. We are relatively new to this, but I've been told by those more experienced that this is the time of year that people leave. In our case, I don't think that many of them are moving to other teams. In our case, I think they fall into two categories: those kids who have naturally reached the limits of their talents and those kids who finished their first year of competition and realized it wasn't for them. I think a lot of these kids were also looking at a long summer of many hours in the gym and deciding whether they really want to commit that much time to it. We lost quite a few Level 4s for this reason, especially boys. We did also have a couple leave due to injury.

Meg