I'm wondering if this would be standard practice from a development squad from those with more experience in the world of gymnastics.
My child was invited for a trial period in development squad. He started gymnastics as a complete newbie age 7 years in June this year. He was in grade 6 so not a lot of basics taught yet but had a pretty decent self taught cartwheel, lots of confidence and appeared to standard out in his group at recreational level. Within 2 months of starting he took part in a recreational competitor in his club and came first in his grade.
Roll on a further 3 months and he came home saying that somebody had asked to see him do a cartwheel during his recreational class. A week later the invitation came through for development squad.
He has been attending for 4 weeks(the trial period)Today he came out brandishing another letter proudly telling me he was staying. I opened the letter and it basically said he needed to go back to recreational gymnastics. No prior warning give that he might not be making the grade.
Cue much tears and disappointment. He is absolutely gutted. He loves gymnastics and has spent the last few weeks doing nothing but practising round offs in the garden etc.
I went to ask the coach and was given along the lines of he can't do headstands, backwards rolls well enough. The problemis nobody has ever taught the boy how to do these skills either in development or recreational.
My main issue isn't that he was rejected, but sort of I think he has been set up to fail. If you need to be able to do basics like headstands/ backwards rolls to be in development squad then surely this should be a pre-requisite to an invitation or remedial catch up work provided.
Secondly, if things weren't going so well it would have been helpful to have some prior warning/ feedback in advance.
For the record attendance was 100%.
Is gymnastics world really this harsh at this level or is this par for the course?
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What to expect from a development squad trial
8 replies
Pipsqueak16 · 29/10/2015 21:49
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