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Our gym does not believe in holding girls back. As a matter of fact half our L4 team is training L5 now too and those ready will start competing right after L4 states. At our last coaches/parent meeting we were told that they would rather see our daughters get to L7 as soon as they could to be able to go for college scholarships. They feel they loose too many good/talented girls in these early levels because they spend way too much time there or become frustrated with the compulsary routines. My daughter will do L4 again next year and so will a couple others. My daughter is still 6 and sort of got thrown into it (competitons) quickly. She did fine, but would benefit from another year. I am not sure she is ready to add a 4th night of practice either. Those doing it another year like my daughter will probably be working L5 skills (my DD is learning kips and sometimes does them sometimes not, LOL) and also do the double season next year.
As a parent I appreciate this philosophy. I posted a USAG chart last week and I can see how the numbers change so dramatically as the levels go up. After going to some meets I saw some girls with unusually high scores. When I asked the coach why they were so high she said that it is because some girls are actually on their third year of level 4?? She came from a gym where talented girls who should have moved up & on were forced to repeat.
I guess that makes me ask the question (and this should probably be put into another thread) What makes a gym successful? When you say a gym is successful is it because they have a HUGE L4 team? Or is it because they produced one good athlete after starting out with a gazillion L4 girls that eventually retired after repeating so many times? Is it how many girls they can move thru the levels up to L10 or Elite? College scholarships? Or, is it just braging rights about maybe having the beam, vault, floor UB champion at States? And nobody need know it took 3 years to get to that podium? Gymnastics is sure confusinmg at times for us parents!
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