I started to post this question in a different thread, but then decided that would be off-topic (where's my gold star, Bog?).
So, as I was saying in the other thread, since we're a new team this year, HC wanted to keep all of our meets in-state (previously we were at the Y where all meets were in-state), but that next year, once the booster club has gotten some fundraising done, she wants to take the team to some meet in Ohio (one state over), and then the year after that she wants to go to Chicago Style (650 miles away!).
I'm sure this will be very fun and that my daughter will be thrilled to essentially be going on vacation with her teammates (remember how she was convinced that if she left the Y she was just going to DIE from missing her teammates? Well, she loves the new ones just as much.). However, as the mother of a perfectly lovely gymnast who is not going to the Olympics or (probably) going to be recruited by NCAA colleges or any of those things, what is the advantage to going to meets that require taking time off school and traveling many hundreds of miles away? For top tier gymnasts who need to establish a reputation for themselves and get their names out there, I can understand it. But for the rest of us (We are the 99%! Shall I occupy the USAG headquarters?), is there really a point to it, other than giving us the choice between spending a jillion dollars to go or else having our children hate us because all of their teammates are going and we don't want to shell out the jillion dollars to go?
I need good answers here, so that, when the times comes, I can sell my husband on the idea! And Chicago in February? Really? I've heard there are lots of nice meets in Orlando.
So, as I was saying in the other thread, since we're a new team this year, HC wanted to keep all of our meets in-state (previously we were at the Y where all meets were in-state), but that next year, once the booster club has gotten some fundraising done, she wants to take the team to some meet in Ohio (one state over), and then the year after that she wants to go to Chicago Style (650 miles away!).
I'm sure this will be very fun and that my daughter will be thrilled to essentially be going on vacation with her teammates (remember how she was convinced that if she left the Y she was just going to DIE from missing her teammates? Well, she loves the new ones just as much.). However, as the mother of a perfectly lovely gymnast who is not going to the Olympics or (probably) going to be recruited by NCAA colleges or any of those things, what is the advantage to going to meets that require taking time off school and traveling many hundreds of miles away? For top tier gymnasts who need to establish a reputation for themselves and get their names out there, I can understand it. But for the rest of us (We are the 99%! Shall I occupy the USAG headquarters?), is there really a point to it, other than giving us the choice between spending a jillion dollars to go or else having our children hate us because all of their teammates are going and we don't want to shell out the jillion dollars to go?
I need good answers here, so that, when the times comes, I can sell my husband on the idea! And Chicago in February? Really? I've heard there are lots of nice meets in Orlando.