WAG Question about multiple sessions in a meet

[Amber]

Hi all,
We are close to the end of our meet season, and I had a question about multiple sessions in one meet. For example, when there are several Level 4, 7, 8, etc sessions in one meet. How do they determine at a big meet which teams go in which session? The reason I ask is, in our last meet, our optional Level girls were placed in sessions with strong competitors (lots of 9.5s on events with fair scoring) but our compulsory girls were put in sessions with teams that were not very competitive. In those sessions, we got basically 1st-4th place on all events and AA and our teams won by a margin of 3 points. Just curious how that's figured out. Almost seemed unfair to the other compulsory teams....

 

[coachmolly]

I think sometimes it's just a matter of numbers and using the right combination of teams to reach an ideal # in a particular session. And often times, the teams that have a good number of upper level girls also tend to be stronger teams.
I think other times it is definitely more calculated so that stronger teams can compete together. A gym with lots of girls scoring 38s at level 10s isn't going to return to a meet where they are placed in a session with no competition. And gyms that host big meets want teams to return.
But I'm sure one of the meet directors here has a better understanding of how it works from meet to meet.

 

[MeetDirector]

Honestly, when I am slotting teams into sessions, it is purely a numbers game trying to keep the session to a certain number of athletes to fit within a given time period and not exceed the USAG maximum number of competitors per session. If I was told to now match up strong teams with strong teams, I would say "how do I know who the strong teams will be on that given day?" Way too much to try and deconflict. I don't like to split levels of a gym between sessions, so my first goal would be to keep a gyms athletes all together. Worrying about that is usually enough to cause sufficient chaos.

 

[Amber]

Thanks for the replies. I was just wondering if it's a random thing or planned somehow? I know our local meets have some kind of planning: you'll see high scoring homeschool type gyms go against similar teams, and vice versa. But in our state, everyone knows how the gyms rank.
The out of state big meets seem random, but I've yet to see a weak age group A in any Level 8 session!

 

[mom2newgymnast]

I'm not sure what states the large meets you are competing in are, but I wonder if it could have to do with the compulsory versus optional season in some states. I am pretty sure we are in the same region and our compulsories compete in the fall and our optionals in the spring. They don't send any of our compulsory gymnasts to the large invitationals with the optionals. I just wonder if maybe some of the more competitive optional teams might not have corresponding competitive compulsory gymnasts competing at the meet and so there are generally just less competing there? How did the scores compare with the other sessions of the same level? Anyway, I have no idea, just a thought I had.

 

[Amber]

I checked, and the other compulsory sessions were tougher. Would've been better competition for our team. We have big compulsory levels, so maybe that's why? Still a mystery!

 

[Mrs. Puma]

I know some of our meets have had "small gym" and "large gym" sessions. Our L3s and L5s are always "large gym" (there are around 20 in each) and our L4s (we have 11) are always "small gym".

 

[fuzi]

Like MeetDirector said, it is mostly just about getting the numbers right. I know that sometimes meet directors will try to schedule local (or close) gyms for Friday sessions or Sunday evening sessions to minimize the amount of school traveling gymnasts have to miss. But again, that's only if the numbers would work out either way.