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Grant W.

Coach
Hello everyone!! I am a former gymnast and competed at USNA in 2007-2008. I got injured during the 2008-2009 season and that ended my competitive career. I am currently in the Navy and will be working with another USNA graduate to open a gym in VA Beach (projected to open in 2017). If anyone has any tips on what they loved at their previous gyms or have any advice on obstacles you faced when opening your own gym please feel free to let me know! Looking forward to communiating with all of you!
 
Hi! Welcome to CB :) Please jump in...we are always looking for more MAG perpective!
 
Parent's perspective:

Modern communication, instead of the flying piles of paper. Updated website. Team (password/gated) website with the handbook, meet schedules etc.. We don't want a paper copy of the handbook in June. 90% of parents take a picture of the various flying papers on their phones anyway.... Because they don't want the flying paper. Please save the paper and put it online where we can find it when we need it.

Interim communication via emails.

My most overriding concern as a parent is that you care about my kid as a person-- the person she is today, the person she is as a gymnast, the person she will be some day when she grows up. The rest is important too, but if she (and we parents) think you have her best interests in mind and care about her and her goals, that is half the battle.

Don't resort to verbally comparing the kids in a negative way, or challenge them to beat or keep up with so and so in a belittling way. I've even seen elite coaches doing this in videos. I think kids succeed despite that, not because of it. Most team gymnastics kids are pretty competitive already. They don't need you to pit them against each other with negative verbal taunts to fuel their competitive fires. That doesn't really work, and that's not the kind of person I am trying to teach my daughter to be. Fair, positive little or big competitions--go for it. She loves that stuff.

Try to not play favorites. It's the single biggest complaint I hear from my daughter and her teammates. Not the hard work. Not the conditioning. But the "why pretend to pick the best person to demonstrate this new drill, because with 'ABC coach' it always Suzie 1 or Suzie 2, never ever anyone else." One of our younger coaches just plain shows blatent favoritism to one or two kids. Their teammates, even the littles, do notice. And they think it stinks.

I am giving you my money, and my daughter is giving you her her trust, please be "present" with she is there. She loves corrections. She hates being ignored. The occasional small and sincere encouraging words from a coach are like nuggets of gold to her little self.

She may look like a big muscled mini superhero out there in the gym at times. But please remember that she is just a kid. A child. I am putting her in your hands. You would know what a little silly pumpkin she is if you could hear the car conversations. I swear these superhero-looking girls morph into the little girls they really are with each step out of the gym toward the car. Please don't ever forget that. Their childhood is a treasure and we are trusting you with a big chunk of it, please view that as the honor it is. I was given the privilege of raising and helping to guide this little soul, and I am sharing a little bit of that with you. I treasure that privilege, hope you do too.
 
Great tips! I do appreciate the enormous trust factor that goes between the coaches and gymnasts and parents. It is something that I valued as a coach and will continue to value as an owner. I wouldn't be opening a gym if I didn't believe that gymnastics changes lives for the better and molds a young person into something great. I hated favorites as a gymnast and I make a concerted effort to keep that practice out of my classes, it is detrimental to the entire class/team that I am serving. Thanks for the advice!!
 
Communication. As long as you can give me good reasons as to why my child is/isn't doing x y z, I'm happy. If you don't want her to compete because she's not ready/you'd prefer she skipped this one and uptrained for the next, fine. If you want to keep her at a lower level to perfect basics so she will accelerate later, fine. Just tell me!

Also bear in mind not all parents are crazy and pushy. Some of us have a background in sport, even gymnastics, even elite. We do understand and accept why things are the way they are, but again, information will stop us guessing. We understand it's impossible to predict, but an educated guess at "if all goes to plan, we'd expect to be at level x in two years", is really helpful to gauge how much time, effort and money we're putting in.

Believe in the kids! Never say never, that child at 14 might be a completely different gymnast to the one you see at 7. Don't write anyone off.
 
I completely agree with you about never underestimating a young gymnast. I quit after competing for 2 years because my coach didn't believe in me and I didn't place on any event. Then after that coach got fired and a new coach came in I won states that next year. It's amazing what a motivated and caring coach can do to inspire a young gymnast to push the envelope and do great things.
 
Not currently. We are getting everything set up and ensuring we have all of the steps that we can see laid out before we get everything going. Are you?
 
If you're starting your own club...start small...quality.

If you would like to start bigger...buy an existing club.
 
Good advice. We are starting our own and have been looking at the literature from several sources on lessons learned when starting their gyms. All good things and we are still learning as we go about making decisions on how to form our gym.
 
Not currently. We are getting everything set up and ensuring we have all of the steps that we can see laid out before we get everything going. Are you?

I'd recommend getting involved. Not coaching though because you will burn that bridge. Judging would be something to consider. stay on the good side of the greater community. There's an established network of gyms in that area and people talk. Start small with rec and developmental...develop your own team in the first two years, don't try to assemble a ready made team from other gyms. First of all, generally that attracts families who have already had issues at every other gym. So I think you're better off starting a little more from scratch and consider transfers with a good reason like it is much closer to their home and previously they were commuting an hour (another gym is likely to be more understanding of that).
 
I'd recommend getting involved. Not coaching though because you will burn that bridge. Judging would be something to consider. stay on the good side of the greater community. There's an established network of gyms in that area and people talk. Start small with rec and developmental...develop your own team in the first two years, don't try to assemble a ready made team from other gyms. First of all, generally that attracts families who have already had issues at every other gym. So I think you're better off starting a little more from scratch and consider transfers with a good reason like it is much closer to their home and previously they were commuting an hour (another gym is likely to be more understanding of that).
Thanks for the advice. I have been looking in to taking the judging exam as soon as my work and school schedule allows. I am in school to get my EMT certificaton now, so I am looking at going to some of the workshops at the beginning of next year. As we are looking at what programs to initially offer, it is good to get ideas from across the spectrum. I agree that it is bad business to try and "steal" other gyms families from the start. We will surely offer rec, developmental, pre school, etc. clsses and maybe with a small competition team at first until we get a solid foot hold in the community here.
 
If you're working as an emt (emergency medical technician, I assume, never can be sure uk vs. us!), have you thought about your availability once you are working?

I had a job in a similar field, mainly shift work. I logistically couldn't work and get my child to training 4 days a week at 4:30- we used to have a 7-3, 9-5, 12-7, 3-11, 11-7 shift patterns. My colleagues did the best they could to swap so I'd be on nights or earlies training days, but in the end it wasn't workable.

Just saying :). I've had many friends wanted to go back to school for midwifery/nursing/emt post children only to qualify and realise they hadn't thought through shifts and childcare...
 
Yeah it is emergency medical technician. Luckily VA Beach is an all volunteer system for EMS so I schedule myself for shifts and only run when I am available. My wife is a volunteer paramedic with VA Beach and thats kind of what got me into EMS. I figure it can only help the gym as well if my wife and I are both trained in how to deal with injuries (we all know they happen). And plus it will cut down on the cost of running a meet when one of us can be the "medical" representative there in case anything happens.
 

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