TOPs and non TOPS

Subject: TOPs and non TOPS

At our gym the Director decided to separate the Levels into groups – TOPS & NON-TOPS within the same level. The kids are feeling bad about themselves and the parents do not like the way it looks in the gym, the TOPS kids are getting all the attention and the NON-TOPS are clearly not, both workout during the same time and for the same amount of hours. The coach has made it clear that the TOPS kids have earned more attention and it is causing problems. Do you think this is a good environment for the average kid who just wants to compete and move through the levels at a non-elite path? The 35’s are not good enough, it seems you have to score 38’s.

You did not provide some information that would help me give you a better answer like the ages and level of your gymnasts, highest level of gymnast in the gym, whether the so-called TOPS groups actually tested for TOPs already and qualified for a TOPs award, whether this division was for all levels or just optional levels. But I will attempt to answer as best I can.

The advantage of TOPs is the concept of getting gymnasts strong and flexible first before you try to teach them skills because it is quicker, easier and safer to do that than to try to teach gymnasts skills for which they are not physically capable of doing due to a lack of strength.

This is true, no matter what talent level, skill level or age level a gymnast is. In other words, ALL gymnasts should be doing TOPs.

Your director has made a strategic mistake in pre-judging the future success of the gymnasts in the program. There is no screening methodology that can predict gymnastics competition success even two years out, much less five years or more. The Russians spent millions of rubles on scientific studies trying to predict which gymnasts would be more successful and after all their research they couldn’t pick any more effectively than a toss of a coin would predict.

Further, your director has inadvertently set up negative and positive expectations for these two groups that unfortunately may make him or her look like they picked successfully. There have been many scientific studies proving that the expectations of teachers influence the success of students.

One study took a group of students whose school teacher was told that they were below average students and had below average IQs. That year the students averaged “Cs” on their report cards with many students having failing grades in some subjects. The next year that exact same group of students had a teacher who was told that they were above average students and had above average IQs. Not one of the students got a grade below a “B” that year.

The lesson of this is that if teachers(coaches) expect gymnasts will do poorly, they will and if they expect they will do well, the gymnasts will live up to those expectations.

As far as deserving more attention, I don’t think there is a gym in the country where most of the parents think some other parent’s gymnast is getting treated better and getting more attention. But unless one or more of these gymnasts is a proven Level 10 training for Nationals in a month or so or an Elite gymnast training for World Championships or the Olympics in a year or two, no gymnast deserves more attention than another. No one can predict which gymnast will be the best or doing the best in the future. There are successful early bloomers and late bloomers and there are comets that burn out or quit before or after a dedicated plodding hard worker passes them by.

As far as scores of 35 vs. 38, unless those are Level 10 scores, there is no correlation between lower level scores and guarantees of higher level success. Yes, successful higher level gymnasts most often had success at the lower levels, but that is far overshadowed by the number of gymnasts who had success at the lower levels but did not have success at higher levels or never even made it to a high optional level.

The director appears to have made a number of strategic and marketing blunders in this decision and will get no better results for making that decision. I am convinced, even without knowing any more about the situation, that this is a policy mistake and unfair to and unwise for both sets of gymnasts.

Good luck in getting this overturned.

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