Shout out to the best gymnastics feed on Facebook.
The All Around is dedicated to bringing the latest news from the world of gymnastics, with coverage of national and international events in all disciplines, profiles of athletes, and technical articles geared to professionals in coaching and judging.
If you are on Facebook and want to get frequent and up-to-date links to all disciplines around the world, even those in languages other than English, I highly recommend you search Facebook for …
The All Around Gymnastics News
They have a blog as well, The-All-Around.com, but I see most of the links sooner on Facebook. One interesting post is a massive database of WAG Scores 2010 from all over the world.
I’m just digging into the second edition, a collaborative project edited by The Couch Gymnast. Looks even better than Issue #1.
• German gymnastics talent Maike Roll
• Italy’s rising star Serena Licchetta
• Reconstructing Russia
• Lost talents of Romania (1990s)
• Form vs Execution
• Russia Rising – Juniors
• Why we love YouTube
• gymnastics photographer Iris Van Den Broek
• gymnastics cross stitch
• Aussie gymnast Nicola Cairns persists
• Amy’s Gym diary (ouch)
• International Gymnastics Quiz
Don’t forget, if you are interested in contributing to the mag- just go to the CONTRIBUTE tab and read the relevant information.
Disclosure: Direct Works Media has signed on as an advertiser for this site on a 3 month trial basis. Please click through and, if you like what you see, recommend Direct Works to your club management.
The Great West Gym Fest competition in Idaho has the best awards system I’ve ever seen. Awards are as important to the organizers as the competition itself.
First, they have a wonderful space with Lake Coeur d’Alene as a backdrop. It’s beautifully lit and decorated. Seating for parents is comfortable.
It’s easy to set an impressive stage in the beautiful Coeur d’Alene Resort, one of the advantages of hosting a meet in a hotel.
When kids finish competing they move immediately to the Awards room. On arrival a video of their competition is already playing. A roving cameraman was careful to get some footage of every competitor.
The video keeps kids and parents entertained until everyone arrives. Scores are ready by that time too, done correctly and promptly. (Scoring is the biggest potential disaster in other meets.)
The video is stopped. An Olympian introduced by a skilled M.C., this year and last it was Scott Crouse from Texas. Scott’s short inspirational speech is very much geared towards the parents.
Next, the Olympian takes over. Here’s 2004 Olympic Floor Champ Kyle Shewfelt telling kids stories about his days as an age group gymnast. Certainly Kyle was one of the best of the 40 Olympians to take on this role over the past 9yrs.
The Olympian next gives a plaque and personally shakes hands with every single athlete.
Organizers divide huge age groups into age divisions of about 10 kids each. (born March, 1999, for example) Gymnasts all get an award on every apparatus.
Placements are acknowledged by sticky tags that are added to the individual plaques. For example, if you finish 3rd on Beam in your small age group category, you get a 3rd place sticky. Announcing results and distributing those tags is fast and efficient. And done in a fun and encouraging way.
When all awards have been handed out, there is an additional set of different (bigger) trophies given for OVERALL COMBINED. We might have 6 different age divisions of Level 6 girls, for example, combining those to find out who had the highest vault score from all ages of Level 6.
This takes time, but is worth it, I feel. It rewards the very best kids in the meet.
Finally, the Bears. The Great West Gym Fest is famous for hand carved bear and moose statues given out only for Team Competition.
You’ll find these bear statues in gyms all over the U.S.A. and Canada.
Olympians enjoy this meet. They are not overworked. Raj Bhavsar has been an Olympic celebrity at events in 8 nations since Beijing. He felt this was his most enjoyable event yet.
Kids have plenty of opportunity to meet and get photographs with their favourite Olympians. This year the Olympians Ice Cream Social was held out on a boat on the lake. Nice.
Trust me, this is only a brief overview of the elaborate awards system put in place by meet organizer Dave Adlard. There’s much, much more. Too much to cover here. But leave a comment if you have any questions.
But I’m thrilled he won the prestigious TED prize for 2010.
At the heart of Oliver’s work is an assault on the obesity epidemic: The CDC states that one in four Americans are considered obese. It is estimated that 43 percent of Americans, or 103 million people, will be obese by 2018. The cost of this epidemic is anticipated to reach $344 billion per year. It currently accounts for almost 10 percent of the yearly US health care costs, and that rate will rise to 21 percent by 2018. WHO’s latest projections indicate that, globally in 2005, approximately 1.6 billion adults were overweight and projects that by 2015, that figure will rise to 2.3 billion.” …
Meet organizer extraordinaire, Dave Adlard, emailed this year’s list of celebrity Olympians attending the 2010 edition of the Great West Gym Fest in Couer d’Alene, Idaho Feb 19-22nd.
Raj Bhavsar
Courtney Kupets
Mohini Bhardwaj
Misy Marlowe
Stoyan Deltchev
Zdravko Stoianov
Linda Metheny-Mulvihill
Joyce Tanac-Schroeder
Ilian Alexandrov
Rick McCharles
OK, that last guy is a pretender. He only watches the Olympics on TV.
If you are not joining us this year, jot down the dates for the 10th anniversary: Feb 25-28, 2011. Dave promises that will be the best ever. The early bird deadline is April 1, 2010. Email funnflip AT msn.com for details.
Instead of using elite demonstrators, the performances are realistic to the level of the girls appropriate to each drill. (The clips are not so intimidating when you bring your laptop into the gym and show a drill to your kids.)
Bottom line: GymDrills.com is an excellent new resource for WAG coaches. A good investment for club owners:
• Free per 7 Days (Trial)
• 3.99 USD per 1 Month (Monthly Membership)
• 35.00 USD per 1 Year (Year Membership)
