S
Smile :)
My husband and I are about to finalize the adoption process for my younger sister who just turned 14. She’s done gymnastics since it was the trendy thing when she was three and every little kid in the neighborhood did it. She did elite testing last summer and competed in a few meets with variable success. I think by then life was starting to get in the way of gymnastics. She came to live with us in December and due to moving nearly across the country to do so, this being an unplanned thing, and her getting extremely physically ill shortly after that gymnastics came to an abrupt halt.
She got back into some conditioning and strength training stuff and did compete floor exercise for the jr. high/high school team here in late winter/spring which led us back into the gym at the gym where her high school teammates train year round. (This is also really the only gym in town or an kind of reasonable driving distance). She's gotten back into shape and is back to doing all events again. Her coach originally told us that since she had tested elite that she could not compete L10 and being gymnastically clueless we didn't realize that wasn't really correct. According to some helpful posters here (and confirmed by USAG rules once someone pointed me in the right direction) she can petition to drop back to level 10 through the regional training coordinator. I discussed that with her coach who now does believe us but said that he wouldn't recommend that. We're going to discuss this more (he had a mini family crisis come up in the middle of this conversation) but I was wondering if from a coaching standpoint others had opinions on the positive or negative points of this.
From my standpoint:
*Positive
-I still don't think she is quite back to where she was last summer (although I think she's getting close)
-Because she has friends on the L10 team she is ok with this (and I would think she could continue to work on new skills/routines just not compete with them)
-From my perspective there is much more going on in life right now than gymnastics. I realize that gymnastics is important to her so I'm trying to be understanding about that but...
*Negative?
-From what I understand if she does this then she would not be eligible to compete at US Jr Nationals in 2009 however she could do level 10 nationals and she could always retest elite at some point later in 2009 or 2010
-Her coach thinks she is above a L10 level (although perhaps there are still ways to make it challenging anyway). I'm not sure this is such an issue since apparently girls do drop back to L10 so if she does she conceivably might not even be the only one in her region to do so this year. Also everyone improves at different rates and I'm guessing that there probably isn't a huge gap between the bottom of the elites and the top of L10 (correct me on this I'm not coming from a gymnastics background).
She got back into some conditioning and strength training stuff and did compete floor exercise for the jr. high/high school team here in late winter/spring which led us back into the gym at the gym where her high school teammates train year round. (This is also really the only gym in town or an kind of reasonable driving distance). She's gotten back into shape and is back to doing all events again. Her coach originally told us that since she had tested elite that she could not compete L10 and being gymnastically clueless we didn't realize that wasn't really correct. According to some helpful posters here (and confirmed by USAG rules once someone pointed me in the right direction) she can petition to drop back to level 10 through the regional training coordinator. I discussed that with her coach who now does believe us but said that he wouldn't recommend that. We're going to discuss this more (he had a mini family crisis come up in the middle of this conversation) but I was wondering if from a coaching standpoint others had opinions on the positive or negative points of this.
From my standpoint:
*Positive
-I still don't think she is quite back to where she was last summer (although I think she's getting close)
-Because she has friends on the L10 team she is ok with this (and I would think she could continue to work on new skills/routines just not compete with them)
-From my perspective there is much more going on in life right now than gymnastics. I realize that gymnastics is important to her so I'm trying to be understanding about that but...
*Negative?
-From what I understand if she does this then she would not be eligible to compete at US Jr Nationals in 2009 however she could do level 10 nationals and she could always retest elite at some point later in 2009 or 2010
-Her coach thinks she is above a L10 level (although perhaps there are still ways to make it challenging anyway). I'm not sure this is such an issue since apparently girls do drop back to L10 so if she does she conceivably might not even be the only one in her region to do so this year. Also everyone improves at different rates and I'm guessing that there probably isn't a huge gap between the bottom of the elites and the top of L10 (correct me on this I'm not coming from a gymnastics background).