Real Moms Of Gymnastic

Alright, before I get started, I have to give credit where credit is due.  I stole the idea of this blog from one of my friend’s FB post.  She was ordering a tee-shirt with this title, and when I saw it, I said to myself “you know what me, that would be a great idea for a post,” so here we are. Having been a Booster Club President in my former life, I couldn’t pass up a chance to write about something with a little comic relief but could bring a lot of value to parents who read it.  In this blog, I am going to identify individual characters by their traits and talk about how they affect the overall morale of a team and even a gym.

Although I am a Cleveland boy (shout out to my Cleveland Browns), I currently reside in Atlanta, as such we will use the characters from the Atlanta House Wives(AHW), and although my wife watches AHW faithfully, I don’t so my character references might be dated.  

The NeNe Leakes’s persona

The gymnastic parent version of Nene just like on the show version is a shit starter and just like the show, she is smooth in that she will get everyone else riled up over an issue that is actually only specific to her.  She is the parent who will talk about the coaches showing favoritism to individual athletes. The reality is she is the parent who is always late, gymnast not focused, always behind on her dues and it is like pulling teeth to get booster club payments from this type of parent.  This persona believes there is strength in numbers, so she is always searching to get others on her side. She will use terms like “I don’t think they treat OUR level fair” when truthfully it is only her gymnast that she perceives to be treated unjustly. If you have a meeting with the coaches with this parent you quickly find out most of the issues discussed are issues related specifically to her gymnasts.  

This persona is terrible news for a gym in that she will get the parents of her entire level viewed poorly by coaches.  When she talks to coaches alone to strengthen her argument, she will use terms like “our level feels” which will make the coaches think the rest of the parents are in agreement with her drama.

If you are reading this, and you are this persona then “girl why are you always starting shit?” but if you are not this person but have her on your team then whenever she brings up an issue to you say “naw, I don’t see it like that.” and keep it moving.

The Kandi Burruss’s persona

The gymnastic version of Kandi is all talk and no action.  This parent is always talking about leaving the gym but never does although everyone wishes she would.  Every year at the end of the season she talks about looking at other gyms but she is always giving the coaches one more chance (to their dismay), but they better get some “act right” this time.  This parent isn’t dangerous to the overall morale of a gym or level she is more-or-less a nuisance because in the back of their head parents are always saying “Bye Felicia.”

Porsha Williams persona

What can I say, the Porsha Williams persona is just lost.  She has no idea what is going on in the gym. She doesn’t remember when she needs to be at a competition, no idea what is happening in general.  The only thing she does well is make her payments on time, go figure. In an effort not to disparage anyone persona too much just watch this video and this pretty much sums up the Porsha persona

The Kenya Moore’s persona

This is the “it is always someone else’s fault” persona.    Of all the drama-filled parent this is typically the most common.  The parent will make statements like “the coaches are not approachable,” “the booster club is not approachable,” “ownership is not approachable.”  This is the parent who never received the important email, who wasn’t told about the meeting and my personal favorite they had no idea a booster club payment was due.  This is a parent who always complains about the “lack” of communication. This parent has minimal impact on a level or team, but they are a nightmare for coaches and support staff.

The Cynthia Bailey’s persona

This poor persona is always the sacrificial lamb.  She is consistently voted to be the spokesman who represents the injustices for everyone at the booster club meeting.  She is the one to fall on the sword for the rest of the group. This persona is the NeNe’s best friend because she is the most gullible.  The NeNe’s of the world will make statements like “you should go talk to the coaches because they will listen to you” or “you should talk to the coaches because you have a better relationship with them than we do” or my personal favorite “it will come out better if it comes from you.”  If you are this persona, then understand NeNe is not your friend. If you have an issue, then represent yourself. You are being asked to be the spoke person because you are not afraid to take matters head-on which is an excellent quality. Just make sure the issues you are addressing are your own and not someone else’s.  If you choose to be the sacrificial lamb, please tell the cook to add an extra side of mint jelly with my lamb chops for when you get roasted.

The Marlo Hampton’s persona

This persona is “bout dat life.”  She is the parent that everyone tries to stay away from because she is embarrassing.  She is loud and rude, and she wants everyone to know she is unhappy. People tend to choose their words wisely around her because they know one wrong word and things can go all the way left quickly.  This person has a pretty significant impact on a level and team because people (including coaches) walk on eggshells around her. Due to her volatility, the coaches usually give this persona’s gymnast more freedom than the rest of the team which creates some resentment from other parents.      

Phaedra Parks persona

This persona doesn’t know when to quit.  What I am about to write may sound harsh but it entirely true although most coaches may not admit it.  The reality is in youth sports a parent is only as relevant as their child is competitive. What that means in the gymnastics world is, the more competitive your child is, the less expendable as a family you are, basically stay in your lane.  The problem with this persona is that they tend to look at their child through a rosier lens than most people which makes them believe they can cross more lines with coaches than most people. This persona ends up being the proverbial “damnnnn” conversation that periodically takes place in the gym.  The conversation goes something like this,

Gossiper One: hey, guess who got kicked off the team this morning because she cussed out the coaches?

Gossiper Two:  Let me guess, Phaedra?

Gossiper One: Correct!

Gossiper Three: Damnnnnn, but I knew it

Gossiper Two:  ……..I need to call her.

Shereé Whitfield persona

This persona is unusual in that she is a walking, talking human version of the Alexa app.  She will give you the scoop on what has gone down in the gym “good or bad.” Often you wonder how in the hell she gets this information, but when you ask her, it is always “a friend of mine.”  The problem with this persona is that she often reveals information that wasn’t supposed to get out. When she gets called on it, this persona acts like she is being attacked. A word to the wise for this persona “just because you know something doesn’t always mean you should share it.”

Kim Zolciak-Biermann persona

This persona is the only smart person out the bunch.  This parent realizes their gymnast is practicing well, competing well, getting a fair amount of focus from the coaches.  She understands that although everything may not be perfect, it could definitely be worse. She typically stays away from the other personas and makes sure to talk to coaches separately regarding any concerns.  The other parents consider her standoff-ish, but in actuality, she is just smart.

Finally, funny side note.  While out for breakfast my wife asked me what persona she most closely represents, and I told her Kandi’s, she almost choked.  She asked me why and I said to her that she acts like she about that life but she ain’t really “that chick.” She acts hard at home talking about what the coaches “ain’t doin” like..

but at the gym, she like “Hey Coaches….luv ya’ll”….

If you like reading ya boy’s stuff then show me some love and sign-up for my newsletter so these blogs can come right to your inbox.

Until next time, peace and soul…. 

The post Real Moms Of Gymnastic appeared first on Gymnastics Dad.

As the old saying goes “knowledge is power” and the more knowledgeable you are about an area, the better positioned you are to take advantage of the opportunities that present itself in the area. The same rules apply to earning a college scholarship, especially with how competitive gymnastics is. If you have read my previous blog titled Why Most Athletes Miss Their Goals you will know I am all about being as knowledgeable as possible. Being a track coach I have come to believe that many athletes miss out on scholarship opportunities merely because they are not knowledgeable enough about the process and the politics that go with it. Track and gymnastics are very similar in that both generate very little revenue when compared to other sports. At the college level with football being the dominant sport both track and gymnastics scholarships are competitive because there a very few available. Knowing that I knew very little about gymnastics and questioned the accuracy of the information that I did know. I knew I needed to get educated by someone who understood gymnastics at a more detailed level and that is how Jills Hicks Consulting came into the picture.

This past summer I took the opportunity to reach out to Jill. The goal was to use this Jill and her company to help educate me as well as other parents within our gym about the process for earning a college scholarship in gymnastics. Being a track coach initially I reached out to the usual suspects like NSCA, but to my surprise, they didn’t offer much by way of consultation for gymnastics. While searching the web, I stumbled upon the Jill Hicks Consulting company. After talking to Jill Hicks and researching her background, I knew she would be the person to provide us the information we needed. For those not familiar with Jill Hicks she is a former college gymnastics coach and continuously featured blogger on flogymnastics.com. Although her company supports various sports, she seems to have carved out a niche in collegiate gymnastics due to her previous experience as a college coach.

For the remainder of this blog, I will talk about my experience with the conference call and some of the high-level things parents learned from the conference call. Unfortunately, I won’t be giving away too much of the juicy details of the call with her because after all, we did pay a pretty penny for her services.

The call we had with Jill lasted approximately two hours. 1.5 hours was allocated to a PowerPoint presentation provided by Jill and the last half hour she dedicated to answering questions from parents. During the meeting, Jill went over a considerable amount of information. Most of her information revolved around gymnasts at Level 8 or higher.

40 is great, but 38.5 is a realistic target

That’s right! You read it right, 38.5 is the score most colleges want you to have completing Level 10. Given that score, it is understandable to see why athletes repeat level 10 multiple times. Jill didn’t go into a lot of detail of how the score or 38.5 needed to be comprised or if all events were weighted equally. That information is probably provided if you sign up for her service. Looking at it as a coach and from a physiological perspective, I would think that there would be a priority placed on bars and vault based on the power requirements for those events. Power is a quality that can’t necessarily be taught, but that is just my opinion.

Find competitive meets in your area.

Okay, I have to admit when Jill told us that traveling all around the country trying to find competitive meets wasn’t necessary my wife’s heart broke but my wallet was like “thank you, Lord.” Jill informed the parents just to seek out competitive meets in our area and ensure the athletes performed well in those meets.

Being a booster club board member, we often assist coaches with setting the competition schedule, and it is good to know that outside of giving the girls the joy of traveling and staying at hotels we need to just focus on ensuring we are doing competitive meets.

Skipping levels is “okay” provided you show proficiency in the current level

With gymnastics being a sport that is driven so heavily by age it is not uncommon to see parents especially those of older athletes wanting to skip levels. Although Jill wasn’t necessarily opposed to that idea, she did place the caveat that athletes should only skip when they have proven proficiency in the current levels skills. My follow-up question was how does she define proficiency, and her response was consistently scoring a 38.5

Colleges don’t want athletes with a lot of wear-and-tear

Gymnastics is a tough sport and the training hours alone does a lot of damage to an athletes body. The training coupled with how early athletes start the sport of gymnastics it is easy to see how wear and tear could be a primary concern for college coaches. Jill stressed that preserving an athletes body was the utmost importance for long-term success. Scoring and skills are essential, but with so few college scholarships available on a college team a coach having an athlete on scholarship with recurring injuries is not a smart investment.

Make your gymnast accessible to college coaches

Based on data provided by statista.com there were almost 20 thousand high school gymnasts in 2016 and 2017. Also, based on data provided by www.scholarshipstats.com the number of scholarships available at D1 schools is twelve, and D2 schools are 6. Given that there are only approximately 85 schools that off scholarships making your gymnast accessible to colleges if critically important. There are a variety of ways to accomplish this through social media, camps, and websites but the key is to ensure your gymnasts can be seen by the college they want to attend.

Finally, I think the conference call with Jill Hicks was invaluable as a parent. My daughter is eight years old and at the time of this writing in Level 6 so a lot of what Jill said will not be applicable for several years. Although I am currently unable to act on much of her recommendations, it did provide me with a game plan on some of the moves I should make moving forward. Someone should never discount the value of information. Many of the parents who attended the conference no longer view gymnastics within the confines of how their gymnast did in a particular meet but more from a “is she trending the right way” from a scoring perspective.

To learn more about Jill and her company, please visit http://www.jhicksconsulting.com/

The post My experience learning about gymnastics scholarships with Jill Hicks appeared first on Gymnastics Dad.

First, let me say being a part of a Booster Club as with anything volunteer can “kinda suck” depending on why you wanted to do it in the first place.  If you are doing it for the love of the athletes, then it doesn’t suck as bad, but if you are doing it for some reason other than that then yea, it is going to suck majorly.  Keep in mind booster clubs like most volunteer positions are thankless jobs.  If you expect most parents to say “hey great job!” then you are in for a rude awakening. 

I have served on the Booster Club board for the last three years at my daughter’s gym, and in this blog, I will give my honest view into what it is like being part of a board.  This blog I will break down into four sections.  The first section I will explain what drove me to become more active.  The second section I will explain to you the bad part of being on the board.  The third I will explain the good part of being on a board, and lastly, I will tell my thoughts moving forward, so here we go.  This will be fun!

My Reasons

First off, know that I am one of those people who go around saying “if you don’t want to do anything to fix it then don’t complain about it.”  You know, the “if you didn’t vote then shut up!” kinda folks.  Well, I didn’t like the way our booster club was running so I decided to join the board and try to change it.  There, that was it, nothing earth-shattering.  I just figured I couldn’t do much worse than the current president at that time so might as well give it a try.  If you only knew the messes I have gotten myself into with that line of thinking!  Seriously, I felt our gymnasts deserved better than what they were getting from the booster club.  Booster clubs are there to support and create a supportive environment for the gymnast, and I believed I was the man to do it……“MAKE THE BOARD GREAT AGAIN”

The Bad

“If you want to mess anything positive up…throw parents in the middle of it”. – Coach Mike

I am going to write a couple of blogs about youth parents but from different perspectives.  From the booster club perspective dealing with parents is the most prominent challenge.  I think if you took a poll of people who were part of booster clubs or any youth volunteer organization and asked them what they disliked the most, I think most would say dealing with parents.  In youth organizations, you have several flavors of parents, and each flavor of parent brings their own set of issues.  Below I am describing each type of parent starting from most damaging to least within an organization.

Mr. and Mrs. problem to every solution. 

This person is a particular breed of negative.  They are usually cancer in the gym especially when they are also Mr and Mrs. too busy to help.  Their goal is simply to point out whatever is wrong with the booster club and the gym but have no intentions in trying to fix it.  They are dangerous in the fact that they have no earthly idea about anything related to the booster club but can tell you every way it is broken.  They typically make statements like “I am one of the good parents,” “I am not trying to be difficult,” “it is not just me, others feel this way also.”  If you have to tell me you are one of the good parents, then you are not.

Mr and Mrs. too busy to help. 

This type of parent you can identify them as the person in the booster club that will make the statement.  “Why don’t we do <fill in the blank>.”  When a board member poses the follow-up question of “why don’t you sign-up to drive that initiative” their response is “Oh, I am too busy!”.  Booster clubs are only as successful as the bodies that support it.  Everyone is too busy (including the current board), but we make time to help provide a supportive environment for our gymnast

Mr. and Mrs. Butt Kisser. 

This parent views the sports within the confines of only their child.  In their mind, if they “make nice” with the coaches the coaches will give their kids extra attention.  For bad coaches, this can be a very effective method but good coaches hate butt kissers, and I will explain why when I review parents from the coaches perspective blog.  This person creates problems for the booster club in that this person always wants to be viewed as “on the coaches side.”  Therefore, they are typically going to push against any ideas that could impact the coaches negatively even if it is necessary.

Mr. and Mrs. I am going to pay.

  These folks probably shouldn’t have their kids in gymnastics if they don’t want to make paying their booster club fees a priority. Gymnastics is expensive and sometimes “life” happens that requires you to pay something unexpected.  The average cost for a gymnast to do a meet is approximately $70.00, and that doesn’t include coaches fees.  By not paying you are essentially telling the rest of the members you are okay with them paying for your child.  Eventually, these parents do pay up.  The board just gets tired of having to use mafia-like tactics to get the payment.

Mr. and Mrs. I won’t lead but I will help out. 

I get it; you want to put yourself in a position that when you become unreliable or too busy, it won’t be on your shoulders if that aspect of the organization fails. This parent can be helpful you just have to be very mindful of what you ask them to do.   

Mr. and Mrs. it is what it is. 

Most volunteers love this group of parents.  They understand that this is a volunteer and set their expectations accordingly.  Many of these parents may be or have been on similar boards, so they know your pain.  They understand the unspoken rules “if I can’t step in, I best not recommend.”  They are the parents who say “you are doing a great job” with no “but” at the end. The problem is these parents typically just go with the status quo in an effort not to make waves and won’t involve themselves in drama.  Unfortunately, they end up being complicit in the drama because they just stand by quietly while the first three types wreak havoc on an organization.

All these different flavors of personalities under one organization can become overwhelming especially for someone doing it voluntarily.   Everybody fits typically into one of these roles, but there are exceptions.  Each role effects the booster clubs differently and depending on the size of your organization and the involvement of the parents the level of damage each role can inflict varies. 

The Good

Outside of dealing with parents, being on the board can be very emotionally rewarding.  Personally, for me, I enjoy being involved with all my kid’s activities.  I could have easily put my daughter in track, but I didn’t want to muddy the waters between parent and coach.  So, being on the board is the next best thing.  Watching how events we put on come together is a thing of beauty.  Having things run smoothly from the board perspective is rewarding in itself.  Most people underestimate the value of consistent communication.  Forcing yourself to learn to deal with various types of people albeit hard is extremely helpful especially from a career standpoint.  I have learned patience and developed a poker face, and I have learned to accept people for the way they are.

Overall booster club organizations are a good thing to involve yourself with.  Most parents don’t want to do it because it can cramp their schedule but if you build a strong team, then it is not bad.  A few warnings when building a team from my experience.  Make sure you comprise the board of families with longevity in the gym.  On my track team, a family has to be in the program at least a year before you can serve in any role.  Most booster clubs don’t have that requirement but be smart in your selection of board members. Vary the skill set of each member.  Having people with the same strengths will cause other areas to be weak.   On our board, we have two people that are very good at organizing and distributing information. One person who is very good a rationalizing problems and me “the muscle” responsible for laying down the law.    Never allow any of the first three parent types on your board.  Remember the booster club and gym are separate entities and they serve different purposes.  Gyms are there to provide a service and make money.  Booster clubs are non-profit and solely there to provide a service.  Keeping them separate is always more beneficial to the gymnast.  Gyms don’t like to spend money because they equate that to losing profit.  When gyms take over the booster club role not only is it typically illegal but the extras like banquets, team outings, and Christmas parties go right out the window. 

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