Parents Waiting for team selection

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Tigerle

Proud Parent
Some of you may recall my vent from last summer. Here’s the next, LOL.

To recap: We‘re not in the US, and our country‘s federation has strict age eligibility cutoffs for the competitive stream, which meant that my then 8 years old daughter who had outgrown her rec class and wanted more challenge had a hard time finding a gym because hardly any in our area offered the in between stream (sort of like XCel but all compulsories, I‘ll call it competitive rec) she needed. The community gyms don’t have the resources and the competitive gyms can’t be bothered.

She jumped for joy when the best gym in town, after months of dithering, decided to make their sort of on the side rec class that she loved an official competitive rec stream for this year. They are still very much the poor relation, only get 3 hours of practice and at one time were over 20 kids to a coach, ouch. Now they have added another two coaches and suddenly there is quite a bit of focus to the practice (think XCel Bronze, maybe Silver) they have started to make vague noises to the kids about a meet coming up, so DD9 is getting excited again. Yeah, I don’t love their style of communication. So I walked up the head coach and asked, all innocently, since the kids were getting excited about the idea of a meet, whether it had already been determined who was going and when, so we could make sure to make the time, weekends filling up fast and so on. Sure enough, they are planning to only take a selected team, but don’t yet know who, or when, nor do they know when they are going to know. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

So I had to tell DD9 not to get excited just yet because it hadn’t been determined at all who would be on the team and we wouldn’t know for a while either. I can’t even guess, because while she is mostly doing as well as anyone, she is one of the oldest and there will be age levels, too. Unlike the competitive levels, there will be a maximum level of skills allowed rather than a minimum required and unlike the girls who are one or two years younger, she won’t be at the maximum allowed for her age.

Uh. I hate this. Not everyone needs to get a trophy, but I wish everyone would get to go. Someone’s gotta be the last. But they probably feel they have a reputation to lose.

No we wait. I make soothing noises. Just do your best. Your vault looked great! And I vent online...she’d be devastated if she didn’t make the team!
 
Yes, it’s hard to watch when they care so much!

I am assuming they are planning to field a team for the local rec league meets for this season (calendar year). I can’t imagine they’d bother to do an in-house meet. Not their style, that’s what the “lesser” community meets would do. Not that DD9 would care, she just wants to be part of things...
 
I read here that some competitive gyms treat the Xcel program like the “red headed stepchild”, LOL, that’s what it feels like for us. But I guess that’s what you get for wanting the well resourced environment for her (not just one, but three pits, trampolines, mats, equipment all over the place) so just have to put up with it!
 
It’s a shame they haven’t embraced “gymnastics for all” yet in your country. Some great gymnasts started later than age 5. My dds teammate is 14 in level 4. She is by far the best one. I see her uptraining, so I feel some score outs are on the horizon, but she just loves the sport and happened to get a late start.
 

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