Parents Does your team have annual try outs?

[kimute]

Our gym currently has annual JO and XCEL try-outs marketed generally to those above intro. rec classes. JO if your child is 8 or under and XCEL to all. They also have a pre-team track from which you don't need to try out, just get promoted by the coach.

 

[thefellowsmom]

Our gym is strictly invite only. There are two levels of invite. They are invited to preteam from preschool and rec classes. I don’t think there are age limits at least at this point. All these kids are put through the developmnental program and compete levels 2 and 3.

After level 3 the kids are either then given an invite to xcel or an invite to level 4 team. Level 4 is where our team really begins. The team is at it’s own facility and only levels 4-10/elite work out there. It seems they are very selective about who moves to level 4. If I am correct in my calculations I think about half the level 3s were invited to level 4 last year. Sometimes it is more and sometimes it is less. I believe the expectation being that you need to be able to keep up with progression and have the talent, body type and mental game to have the potential make it to level 10 or beyond.

Because of this quality of development our XCEL team is very strong.

Once you are invited to level 4 I think they are in permanently. We don’t have a lot of skipping or repeating levels but kids progress as they progress and repeating levels is seen from time to time.

We do lose some kids to this process and usually a few level 4s that don’t feel the intensity of our program is a good fit will move on each year. Other than that there isn’t a lot of movement either in or out of team other than kids quitting all together. When we arrived from another local gym with her being a level 9 they were in total shock. Very out of the ordinary. Most new kids not raised in our program come in from out of state.

 

[mls529]

Both of our gyms are like most everyone else's. Tryouts/assessments for new team members, but no try outs for existing team members. I can't imagine having existing team members try out every year -- how stressful and horrible!