Parents Prep Optional Parents?

[LMV]

Is anyone else's daughter competing [or perhaps considering competing Prep Optional] for the 2010-2011 season?

 

[Tumblequeensmom]

My daughter just finished Prep Op. for the 2009-2010 year. She had been training for L7, kind of freaked herself out and went to Prep Op. She has now decided to go back to L7 for the upcoming season. Prep Op was a fantastic experience for her... she was able to conquer her backtumbling fears, have a really FUN year doing gymnastics, have some fantastic meets and most important, built her confidence and love of the sport back up again... I have absolutely NO complaints about it at all!!

 

[LizzieLac]

My DD just competed Prep Opt this past season. It was her first year competing gymnastics and it was a just a super experience for her. It is a great way to get introduced to the sport and it worked well with her schedule on swim team. After doing it she realized how much she loves it and has decided she wants to focus on gym now, and gave up swimming. So for us it was an excellent way to ease into the commitment and learn more about the sport. She is doing level 5 now, but I think Prep Opt helped her understand what the sport requires and about the commitment.

 

[LMV]

Thank you to both of you for your responses.

TQ'sMom---
Your daughter's experience makes me think this may be the right route for our child as well. She competed one L7 meet in Fall 2009. At that point the plan was to score out of L7 and compete L8 in the winter/spring. Instead she took about 6 months off from gymnastics. Now she is back training L7/L8 [and seems to have her L7 skills and some L8 skills back]. We had wanted her to take this upcoming competition year to get back into training and then have her compete L8 in 2011-2012. We thought we were on the same page with the coaches but then she came home all excited last week because one of the coaches had her demonstrating pirouettes and told her he thought she was going to be one of their top bars workers for L8.

After this we sat down with the head coach who told us she is coming back a lot more quickly than he had anticipated and he thinks it was premature for us to decide she won't compete at all. They will start choreographing routines in July and he feels she has enough floor and beam skills that they could pull together adequate L8 routines. He also thinks her bars will be very strong. She has not done much work with vault but she wants to start working on her Tsuck again which would have been her L8 vault last year. I think he is probably right that she can compete L8 but I don't think it will be pretty [or really fun] and would rather see her "repeat" L7. When I suggested this he said that he thinks that would be regressive for her [and admitted that their L7 team is already a bit bigger than he likes]. If we don't want her to do L8 he will support that but he would have her compete advanced Prep Opt. Since then I've done a little looking around and I think that may be a good option.

 

[Tumblequeensmom]

LMV... it was really a GREAT choice for Katy. She had a year of just having FUN w/gymnastics, placed 1st or 2nd AA at every meet she attended (great confidence booster)... and now she's back and really determined and motivated to get those skills... Good luck w/what you decide!!!

 

[LMV]

LMV... it was really a GREAT choice for Katy. She had a year of just having FUN w/gymnastics, placed 1st or 2nd AA at every meet she attended (great confidence booster)... and now she's back and really determined and motivated to get those skills... Good luck w/what you decide!!!

What I really want for her is to have some fun with it. How she places at meets really isn't a concern but I would like her to be prepared enough that she isn't overwhelmed. It sounds like Prep Optional would allow her to add in skills as she is ready to compete them. Of course she is now determined that she will be ready to do L8 so we're trying to take a step back and look at everything.