Nationals Really Lets You Know Where You Stand

The Level 10 JO Nationals and the Level 9 Eastern/Western Nationals will certainly give you the feedback as to how your gymnasts are doing. But by that time, the information comes too late to do any good for the current year’s success.

Regionals Only Tells You How You Rate in Your Area

A gymnast’s performance at Level 8 Regionals may or may not give you really great feedback about where your gymnasts stands, because there is great disparity in the level of performance from region to region. There are very weak regions and very strong regions. This is why it is important that gyms, especially in weak regions, travel outside of their region to really competitive invitational meets.

Your Choice of Goals Will Frame Your Evaluation

The primary goal, I would choose, would be to qualify as many gymnasts as possible to Nationals level competitions and compete to win at those national meets. There can be other legitimate goals that would affect gymnast’s performance and your evaluation. Some coaches might choose to basically “skip” (compete one meet, hit the mandate score and move up) certain optional levels and that will affect gymnasts performances and meet placements for that year.

Most Common Levels to Skip and Why

The most common levels to skip would be Level 7 and Level 9. Some coaches do not like restricting their optional gymnast’s maximum difficulty, especially in tumbling, vault and bars, as Level 7 does. Other coaches want their gymnasts to start to prepare to use the real bonus system, instead of the Level 9 bonus scoring.

Other Reasons to Skip Levels

It makes sense to some coaches of small gyms to move up their gymnasts together to make sure gymnasts have a “team” to compete with. They might do that to make sure they can achieve the best team score or do it for the social benefit of gymnasts so they do not have to compete alone at meets, which is obviously less fun for the gymnast.

Pre-Season Evaluations

Before the season starts, you will already want to have evaluated the impact of strength and flexibility (or the lack of it) on your gymnast’s potential performance. The start value of the gymnast’s routine is a basic point to evaluate how well their performance will be able to score. If the skill difficulty and connections are not enough to get the max start value, you obviously need to add more difficulty to the routine.

In Season Evaluations

During the season, you will have scores to help evaluate your gymnasts execution and execution errors. Tracking falls and major and then, minor deductions at meets gives coaches and gymnasts feedback on what to emphasize in mid-season practices. We have check sheets to take with us to meets to track falls and errors.

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