Date: Saturday 21st October 2017 at
We have considered the clubs approach to the competition season for 17/18, reflecting on:
- the impact to the club to provide consistent coaching, in particular Saturdays
- the available training time for members to develop new moves in order to demonstrate improvements and longer term meet the requirements of BG for the talent pathway as appropriate
- the number of events members have to train for - various routines etc, that can impact on their developing and focus on key competitions
- the cost implications for parents and the club with volume of competitions
- Value of league competitions and how they are viewed by BG
Therefore, for next season (after league 4 and the league finals) the club will only be entering gymnasts for BG recognised events; Regional NDP Competitions, Performance/Elite Spring Events and English Championships. The English championships will still provide those previously competing at League 3 the opportunity to compete at Silver, but importantly it will massively reduce the need for multiple routine work and allow for a more structured approach to skill development and the less frequent but more important national events.
Exception requests should be made to the competitions team and Head Coach for consideration. But we expect this to be minimal/zero as people will be encouraged to develop through the NDP process which gives good opportunity in the right direction, with the ultimate aspiration for selection for the BG pathway and ultimately the BG team. This is not an impossible dream for our members to aspire to, as we have one of our county gymnasts recently selected and was successful to step onto the pathway with one of our own coaches. In summary, we believe that NDP and BG events gives the appropriate access to competitions, the chance to be seen by pathway coaches and in some events meet the criteria for selection, whilst allowing for a steady development of skills to support their development and competition success. This will mean the following competitions will be available for gymnasts in 2017-18:
Existing League 2 & 3:
- 3 x NDP regional
- 1 x NDP team qualifier
- 1 x NDP Finals
- 2 x English Championship qualifiers
Existing League 1:
- 2 x English Championship qualifiers
- 2 x Spring Series events (qualification to NDP finals or British Championships)
Your coach will advise which level you will enter and it is the clubs ethos to ensure that we enter gymnasts that are able to achieve the best execution scores, not to drive tariff up. This way the gymnast has a positive competition outcome, which is essential as they develop and the pressure of competitions increase. Therefore, this may sometimes feel like no progress has been made, but success is in results not moving to the next level and having a bad competition experience. Hopefully this will explain our approach for next year and offer some explanations around any recent competition entry decisions.
If you have any questions please contact laura@cangaroos.org