Entries Tagged 'club governance' ↓

Another great post from John Geddert:

The system of dealing with parents evolved over time into what I like to refer to as the Coach-Athlete-Parent Appreciation Triangle

Some of the his key points under the heading: DEFINE BOUNDARIES

If you have a concern, feel free to address it …

Never air your concerns in open forum …

The inevitable urge to question coaching decisions, inner gym fairness and equality, and perceived favoritism, etc. should be squashed in an explanation that the program truly has the best interests of ALL ATHLETES at heart.

Concerns should be conducted in a productive professional manner.

Although parent goals for their child are important, they need to realize that these goals should be attached to safety, character development, and mental/emotional well being.

Parents should contribute to the discipline of the program.

Parents are a representation of your club when at competition or when traveling wearing your TEAM COLORS.

For details, click through to his site – GYMNASTICS COACHES – Dealing with Parents
.

In Shawn’s case it’s a Coach-Athlete-Parent-Agent Appreciation Quadrangle.

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Bart Conner Gymnastics Academy in Oklahoma offers a free class, once a week, for autistic kids.

Nice.

… “The gross motor development skills, that’s what we do,” said Ben Fox of Bart Conner, who, along with Ann Goff, gym teacher at Lincoln, originated the idea to offer these free classes to Norman Public Schools’ students who are identified on the autism spectrum.

“It’s great for motor and language skills, and they’re having fun while learning. That’s what kids like to do … run … jump,” Fox said, motioning toward one of the students, Isaac, as he jumped in circles on the trampoline …

Norman Transcript

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Young love is adorable …

But it can cause problems at the gym. Especially if both kids are competitive gymnasts.

Do you have a policy on that? … If so, leave a comment.

Coach Sasha on Make it or Break It will kick the girls out of the club for dating. At Altadore, years ago, I recall we once had a rule where all boys had to stay physically on one side of the long pit. The girls on the other side. … Like that worked.

With the teenage girls I sometimes invite the boyfriend to come to workout. Once. Then give him so much volunteer work to do while he’s there … that he never comes back.

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I’ve been following the depressing court case in Northern Australia.

… A GYMNASTICS organisation has been fined $70,000 for breaching safety obligations which led to the death of a teenager.

Townsville Gymnastics was charged with breaching the Workplace Health and Safety Act after gymnast Michelle Maitland, 19, fell and hit her head on the floor while practising at the Aitkenvale gym in June last year.

Ms Maitland fell and hit her head on a piece of concrete not covered by a safety mat. She died in hospital the following day. …

Gymnastics Townsville “acknowledges the fine imposed by the industrial Magistrate in Townsville earlier today. We are devastated that the life of a young woman has been tragically cut short”.

It’s in the hands of lawyers, however. The club will appeal.

The only upside is the warning we all can take from Michelle’s death. Be sure there’s no way anyone can reach concrete from any trampoline device in your gym.

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Intended for sports and leisure organizations, Amilia is a Web based management platform that assists with organizing your members, registrations and activities. …

Amilia is an all in one management tool that enables you to set up a database of your members, customers and contacts.Through the Internet you will have access to your data anywhere at anytime. Nothing to install, buy or download, Amilia is functional within a few days.

Amilia integrates registration and online credit card payment processing …

Amilia.com

Costs start at $.19 / transaction and $19 / month.

Leave a comment if you’ve tried it. There’s a 30 day free trail.

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There are two unspoken truths about gymnastics clubs:

1. Many coaches ‘friend’ their gymnasts
2. Many coaches bring their own children to play at the gym

You know those kids. “Gym rats.”

They think they own the gym, since it’s been their personal playground all their lives.

There’s a good thread on this topic over at Chalk Bucket.

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I’m researching policies and procedures manuals for youth sports clubs.

Leave a comment if you know of a good template online. Or a service that sells them.

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What would you say is the best facility in the world for “gymnastics”?

… Better than University of Georgia for WAG?

… Better than Woodward West Gym Camp for WAG and MAG?

Woodward West

… Best facility for Trampoline sports?

… For Recreation gymnastics? … Cheer?

We’re particularly looking for best layout of apparatus for each discipline.

Leave a comment.

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Attention club owners.

Colleen Christiansen of Nastics! is the winner of the 1-year free membership to American Gymnast Premier:

• Savings
• Education
• Earnings
• Growth

Only 100 clubs, starting today can subscribe to the Beta program at a discounted price – first payment of $69.00, followed by 23 payments of $19.95 monthly.

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Jay Thornton on American Gymnast explains it:

… 4 essentials that every gym owner or gym manager needs …

• Savings
• Education
• Earnings
• Growth

Click through to the videos page for details.

screenshot

… To kick-off the launch of American Gymnast Premier, I’m giving away a FREE 1-year membership to the program – no strings attached! Just briefly state how winning this free membership would benefit your gymnastics and/or cheerleading program in the “comments” area of this blog post and we’ll select one lucky winner based on all the comments.

American Gymnast Premier will go live Tuesday, Sep 21, 2010 at 1:00pm E.S.T. We’ll announce the winner of the 1-year free membership just prior to the program going live. Since the program will be brand new, and we want to make sure everything runs smoothly for our new AG Premier members, we are going to limit the number of subscribers to 100 members.

The program is available worldwide. But the contest is U.S.A. only.

Winner gets one year Premier level discounts on all purchases with American Gymnast (e.g. chalk), full access to Gymnastics on Demand, AG Premier Affiliate program, customized ‘shop’ page for their web site, and receive all internet marketing tutorials specific to gymnastics and cheerleading businesses.

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Many gymnastics coaches are lousy at dealing with parents. Especially young coaches.

That’s a required skill for a coach. As important as a handstand for a gymnast.

Here’s an excellent post from a gym Mom on Chalk Bucket forum:

… I just had the BEST parent-coach meeting that I ever went to, and I thought I’d share some of the things that this coach did. This was a coach talking to parents of L5/L6 girls fast-tracked (I use the term lightly – really it’s just girls identified to have the potential to go to Optionals in the next couple of years) who are 7-10 years old. We are all new to her team although not new to the gym.

She talked about her background. Now, I’ve had other coaches do this, but it always came off sort of braggy (e.g., “I was almost an elite gymnast”). This coach was very straight forward about her years of experience but also talked about why she coaches the levels she does and what she brings to it.

She complimented every single girl on the team during her talk. I don’t know if she planned this out, but she just worked it into the conversation. For example, she’d say something like “A is extremely flexible which is going to be great for her when we work on ….”

She made her expectations to the parents clear and gave specific examples from her experience. Most importantly she talked about what 8-10 year olds will not always share with their coach, even when they should. For example, she told a story of a girl who was normally a really hard worker who was just not doing her best. Finally she snapped “what is wrong with you today?” and the girl explained that her dog had died the night before. She said how girls will sometimes not talk about this because they don’t want their coach to think they are shirking, but the parent should email to help the conversation.

She talked about her own kids and family. Not too much, but enough so that I could related to her as a mother.
She talked about her goals for the team. She made it clear that if they give it their all, their scores should be in a certain range and showed a general roadmap of when they should be acquiring skills.

She talked about the need for balance in their lives and gave some specific examples of what will over tax a child vs. what will give a child a good time outside of the gym.

She talked at length about injuries and injury prevention. Even saying things like “if your child is limping at home, email me so that I watch them at the next practice.”

She talked about what we should expect as our children get older, both the good and the more difficult. She gave actual statistics about how many graduating seniors go on to 4-year colleges (not for gymnastics –just to study) and how girls who stay in the program stay out of trouble.

Most importantly, she actually asked us (as parents) what our goals were. That is, what do we hope our kids gets out of the hundreds of dollars a month we shell out. I just about fell out of my chair with shock.

I hope this is useful to coaches who plan talks with their new teams.

My personal tip #1 for all coaches = always escort your gymnasts to their parents at end of practice. Be available to chat and answer any questions at the end of each workout.

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Many Gymnastics clubs are looking for the best registrations software. High on the wish list is online registration for recreation members.

We’ve had 3 recommendations:

• EZ Facility

• Amelia – pricing

• iClass Pro – pricing

Leave a comment if you have any comments pro or con on these software packages. Or others.

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Darlene Fedyna of Gymtastics Gym Club (Calgary, Alberta) gained nearly 150 new nieces and nephews.

Earlier this month, Darlene Fedyna returned from working at Sikelela school near Dundee, South Africa. There, she taught 147 students in Kindergarten through Grade 7 who named her “Auntie Darlene” about movement, teamwork, and how to play sports.

The initiative, called Play-it-Forward, was possible through fundraising efforts at her gym in Calgary that raised about $6,500 — enough to buy basic sports equipment and T-shirts for the kids at the school. …

read more on Gymnastics Alberta

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