Hi all- new Dad here

[TxDad]

Hello all,

My wife was a level 9 and my two girlies, ages 5 and 6, are now in gymnastics. I only know what the wife tells me about gym, So as any good husband would do, I joined this forum to learn on my own!

When I am not carting the girls around I build software. Naturally, I would also be interested in helping the Gymnastics community with that.

Would love to hear back from you all!

Thanks,

Josh

 

[Deleted member 15064]

Welcome dad of 2 gymnasts. I think having a wife who was in this sport will come in handy along the way. As opposed to some of us just stumbling through for years trying to catch up with what our kids are doing in this dang sport.

As for software - I've now bought and tried 2 phone apps for gymnastics competitions (Chalk It Up and Meetacular) and I don't think either one was worth the purchase. Still searching...

 

[BlairBob]

It would be nice to have meet scoring software that did boys too!

 

[TxDad]

Welcome dad of 2 gymnasts. I think having a wife who was in this sport will come in handy along the way. As opposed to some of us just stumbling through for years trying to catch up with what our kids are doing in this dang sport.

As for software - I've now bought and tried 2 phone apps for gymnastics competitions (Chalk It Up and Meetacular) and I don't think either one was worth the purchase. Still searching...

Thanks for the reply. My wife is very knowledgeable but I always find myself asking her "how hard is that?" or "what can I do to help?" I just feel like I am kind of out of the loop. I am betting its due to the fact of the only gymnastics I have watched are Worlds or Olympic competition. So right now my job is to learn about the sport, make sure my girlies are trying hard, and having fun.

@upstateNYgymnastics I am curious now, could you please tell more about the pain you are having?

 

[TxDad]

It would be nice to have meet scoring software that did boys too!

Hi @BlairBob can you elaborate a bit more on the problem. I understand you want meet scoring for boys, are you talking about a phone app or a computer program designed to run a laptop for judges to use? Or are we talking about something that a parent would use that can track both girls and boys?

Thanks!

Josh

 

[Amusibus]

I like that you are involved and curious. I wish my husband was like that, he dislikes gymnastics and our gym in particular and has told me many times that it's just my thing to deal with. Except for writing the checks...which I guess could explain some of the aversion.

 

[TxDad]

Thanks @Amusibus .. I guess, maybe secretly, I have always thought gymnastics was interesting. I have a higher appreciation now that I see the work that goes into it while watching the older kids during my young ones practice.

 

[BlairBob]

Im thinking more of a phone app. Quite a few for the girls.

 

[flippingtogether]

My DD is fairly new to gymnastics, but it seems like there is a need for a mobile app at meets that tracks all the gymnasts scores in real time. I see gobs of parents using pen and paper at meets, and then doing math to calculate the AA and team scores. It seems that there should be an app that ties in with the gymnastics meet manager software it seems most meets use.

There is something called MeetMobile that works for swim meets. It ties in with swim meet management software .... So instead of kids and parents walking to some results wall where times and results are posted, the times and placings for each event come up on the mobile device. You can sort and find results by team, event, or individual athlete.

Would be cool in this other sport our kids are in......But I haven't seen this in the gymnastics world yet.

 

[Deleted member 15064]

chalk

Thanks for the reply. My wife is very knowledgeable but I always find myself asking her "how hard is that?" or "what can I do to help?" I just feel like I am kind of out of the loop. I am betting its due to the fact of the only gymnastics I have watched are Worlds or Olympic competition. So right now my job is to learn about the sport, make sure my girlies are trying hard, and having fun.

@upstateNYgymnastics I am curious now, could you please tell more about the pain you are having?

ChalkItUp - User friendly. Beautiful/ clean graphics, easy to navigate and input scores in real time at the meet. Can view scores of one meet for all athletes in a particular level easily. NO sharing mechanism. No ability to get the results emailed, texted or shared on social media.

Meetacular - Links meet location with google maps for navigating to events. That's cool... Ugly graphics. Not particularly user friendly (took a bit of work to figure it out without directions). Shareable. Get kicked out of program regularly while inputting. Oh, and those ugly graphics again...

I'm ready to purchase a third and see if it reconciles some of the problems of my first two choices.

 

[MeetDirector]

TxDad -

You are certainly in the right state to get more involved with this crazy sport; there are a lot of gyms in Texas that produce amazing gymnasts.

As I was in your shoes several years ago, allow me to suggest that you investigate how you can help your daughter's club on the meet execution side of things. It is very interesting to get a peek behind the curtain and learn how a meet is put together and executed. As you begin to see and understand how the really big meets are put together you will gain a completely different appreciation for the amount of work it takes to put a meet together in which your daughter actually competes for maybe 5 minutes total.

Another thing would be to learn about the sport yourself. Learn about the rules and start working on developing the enormous amount of trust in your daughter's coaches that will be needed as she moves through the levels. Don't try to be her coach - leave that for the experts; become her biggest chearleader and supporter. This sport does amazing things for our daughters; it is well-worth the sometimes bumpy ride.

Good Luck!

 

[TxDad]

@upstateNYgymnastics Thanks for the detail. So right now I understand you would like to see a mobile app that has:

1: Beautiful, Clean UI
2. Easy to Use,
3. input scores in real time
4. Reliable
5. Ability to view all scores for a level(s)
6. Sharable results in real time, export function (social media, text, or email)

That said, other features that I could think of would be a scoring collaboration. So if I cannot build something that ties directly into the meet software, I could make it where 1 parent (user) inputs a score and it pushes it to a group of parents with calculations. More over, every parent could input their kids score and it would update everyone on that team in near real time. This kind of thing helps with reliability. However going down that road is more of a mobile web app rather than a downloadable app, but would give you access from anything with internet -example being at home/office you could access or download scores from meets to spreadsheets, print, ect.

Thoughts?

Also what do most meets use for scoring software? I need to do some research to see if they have hooks that I could connect to.

Thanks Again!

 

[TxDad]

TxDad -

You are certainly in the right state to get more involved with this crazy sport; there are a lot of gyms in Texas that produce amazing gymnasts.

As I was in your shoes several years ago, allow me to suggest that you investigate how you can help your daughter's club on the meet execution side of things. It is very interesting to get a peek behind the curtain and learn how a meet is put together and executed. As you begin to see and understand how the really big meets are put together you will gain a completely different appreciation for the amount of work it takes to put a meet together in which your daughter actually competes for maybe 5 minutes total.

Another thing would be to learn about the sport yourself. Learn about the rules and start working on developing the enormous amount of trust in your daughter's coaches that will be needed as she moves through the levels. Don't try to be her coach - leave that for the experts; become her biggest chearleader and supporter. This sport does amazing things for our daughters; it is well-worth the sometimes bumpy ride.

Good Luck!

Nice to meet you,
Thanks for the advice. I think it is most important to be involved. I never thought of the meet execution side of things.... I am still pretty new.
I have been athletic most of my life and had many coaches, it has been a really eyeopening experience to see the expertise of the coaches. Especially the work they do with young kids.

-J