WAG What does your gym do to make your home meet special?

[thegymfreak]

My gym's home meet is a costume contest- pick a holiday and dress up. A superteam award is given out after the last session, counting the top 20 scores on each event. 3 points are awarded for winning best dressed and happiest team each session. What does your gym do?

 

[GymBee97]

they just run a normal meet no special themes like that. We are lucky to get the meet organized and have enough adults to run everything for every session.

 

[kayjaybe]

At our last home invitational, we had so many gyms sign up that most of our girls didn't even get to compete. We use the meet as a fundraiser, so paying entries come first. Only girls that had not qualified for states got to compete.

 

[TeamGram]

We usually sell Good Luck Grams. Mostly they are small items like Hersey Kisses or suckers with a tag attached so you can write a message to your favorite gymnast. The money raised last year helped to pay for new audio/visual equipment for the gym as well as providing a picnic last summer so that the team parents could meet each other and the girls could be together somewhere other than the gym.

 

[shelovestoflip]

Our gym hosts an invitational and it is a theme. Girls dress according to the theme and we award a prize to the best dressed.(funny, cheap but they love it...think iParty junk, lol!) We also do a judges award for each event and that girl gets a 'themed' prize as well. Gyms here seem to always do a judges award though not all meets do a 'dress acccording to meet theme'. Honestly, I think the younger girls love the dress up piece. Older girls, not so much, especially if it's a beach theme in the dead of winter here in the Northeast....nice in theory but the wear a bathing suit thing seems too much for our older girls!

 

[Canadian_gym_mom]

We don't do meets (gym too small) but some of the ones dd has been to have been: Beach (the favours were sunglasses in a beach bag), Winter wonderland, 70s, rock 'n roll...

None of the others had anything to do with the theme other than decorations and the club with the most people in costume for march-in get a prize.

 

[Vaibicy]

My old gym used to give us free pizza (2 slices!) and juice. And they made the favour bags stuffed to the MAX with lip gloss, hair ties, granola bars, hair clips, hair bands, lip balm... Basically, they made sure to satisfy the interests of girls from the ages of 8-16 (Seriously, you cannot have enough hair accessories, haha). We moved to a new city and new gym 2 months ago and haven't been to a home meet yet. Can't wait to see what they have in store!

 

[leotardmakermum]

Favour bags. Wow.

Things obviously work differently in other places. Here, gymnastics meets are about gymnastics. The only things that are given out are the placing awards. You go to compete, and that's what it is about - gymnastics.

My child doesn't need more *stuff*. And it must be terribly expensive to do! I hope that competition gifts of any sort never take off here.

 

[mom2kazkids]

We hosted our first meet this last November, and while we (I) was getting results ready, our optional girls lead the girls that were waiting for awards in Zumba. Everyone loved it, even some of the visiting coaches joined in.

 

[GymBee97]

Favour bags. Wow.

Things obviously work differently in other places. Here, gymnastics meets are about gymnastics. The only things that are given out are the placing awards. You go to compete, and that's what it is about - gymnastics.

My child doesn't need more *stuff*. And it must be terribly expensive to do! I hope that competition gifts of any sort never take off here.

If I remember correctly USAG requires some of these favor bags depending on the type of meet it is with a dollar value minimum. Some of the stuff DD has gotten was junk but some are nice.

Some of the nice ones - Beach Towel, Blanket throw, Leotard, T-shirts
Some of the so-so ones - hair scrunchies, cheap sun glasses, bag of candy

All the invitationals we go to have something which is probably why the meets are around $75 per kid and up (most of the ones DD went to this year were in the $100 - $125 per kid range - includes coach fee)

 

[SuperGirlmlm]

I like what we do, but we have to fundraise for it:-/
We give ribbons for the top 8 girls on each event, top 3 get a medal. Then in aa, top 3 gets a cool bobblehead.
Then, every gymnast competing gets a t-shirt with meet name, date, and we have a new quote every year
Best part: hs contest while final scores being added up. Winner of each grade gets a gaterade

 

[2G1B]

My kids haven't been to any that had stuff like costumes. They usually get some sort of little favor - a key chain, a Christmas ornament... DS has gotten t-shirts; but that is about it.

At our home meets it is usually something small - I think key chains are common.

For awards we normally go out 40% with medals. For AAU I think it is 50%.

 

[Aussie_coach]

Favour bags. Wow.

Things obviously work differently in other places. Here, gymnastics meets are about gymnastics. The only things that are given out are the placing awards. You go to compete, and that's what it is about - gymnastics.

My child doesn't need more *stuff*. And it must be terribly expensive to do! I hope that competition gifts of any sort never take off here.

That is so true, generally if you go to a competition in Australia the vast majority of kids will go home empty handed. They just give out place for either 1st-3rd or sometimes 4th-6th on apparatus and all round but there can easily be 120 or more girls per division. There are generally no goodie bags or anything given to them for participating.

in many ways its good, kids these days seem to always think they should 'get something' for doing a comp. but the comp is the special thing in itself.

 

[Iwannabemargo]

Same here - 1st to 3rd get medals, the others get a well done for competing !

 

[Canadian_gym_mom]

For awards we are somewhere between Britain/Australia and the US. They do medals for 1st to 3rd and then ribbons for 4th to 8th.

 

[thegymfreak]

My gym's home meet is a costume contest- pick a holiday and dress up. A superteam award is given out after the last session, counting the top 20 scores on each event. 3 points are awarded for winning best dressed and happiest team each session. What does your gym do?

Edit: We have been running this meet for 10 years, (ever since our gym's team program came around) and it has over 600 girls in it (only about 70 are ours) so this meet has gotten to be a great fundraiser for our gym, so the costume contest and the fun aspect keeps teams coming to the meet.