Parents Gymnastics 101?

[Okgymmom23]

My 6 year old daughter and I are brand new to the possibility of competitive gymnastics. Is there a gymnastics for dummies post/blog/book? I just feel very uninformed about what should or will happen and when. Our gym has a 3 level "pre-team" (my daughter is in the second level now) and then they track to excel or level 3. I dont even really know the difference. Some specific questions:

What is the difference between excel and levels? Are levels JO? Does JO have the possibility of leading to the olympics? Or only at some gyms? What if the goal is college gymnastics? Are there ages for each level? If our gym only has college placement aspirations, at what point would we need to consider a different gym if she has Olympic intent?

I would just like a big picture overview about the different possible paths because we are planning to move out of our current area and if finding an outstanding gym is going to be necessary in the future, we'd rather just move close to one now.

 

[Flyaway]

This is an easy and hard question to answer. haha. We really need a flow chart.

The general answer is JO is levels 1-10. Levels 1-5 are compulsory (all routines are the same) and levels 6-10 are optional. If your child has Olympic aspirations she should do JO. Beyond level 10 there is Elite (Jr. and Sr. depending on age) and that's the level you see at the Olympics. There are several different ways to get there, and those are all gym-specific. A gymnast could go through all levels and then qualify elite. Or she might compete one year at a low level and then fast track to training for elite via HOPES (a prep type program for young talent ages 10-13). Or she might do TOPS (Talent Opportunity Program - I think that's the full name...) and compete JO simultaneously. Or do any combination.

Xcel was created to provide a path for gymnast to compete with fewer hours and requirements. Xcel routines are all optional. But not all gyms use it that way. Some use it to skip the lower JO levels (to avoid compulsories). Some use it for the girls that they think are not cut out for JO. Some treat it as a "lesser than" program. It's really dependent on the gym.