Over the past weekend at R2R (Region 2 Rising) in Spokane many of the clinicians I talked with are worried that USA Gymnastics will not organize Congress events as well as they have been run independently in the past.
It seems a vote was just taken in this Region, the Pacific NW, to turn over their event to USAG Head Office in Indianapolis. Region 2 had been the last of the independent Congress events.
If top-down management was a good model, there would still be a Soviet Union.
Decentralization and competition are what made the United States great. This is a big step backward for Region 2 in my opinion.
I like the Australian model. Gymnastics Australia helps the regional congress events by providing an international clinician headliner. After that, each State in Australia does their own thing. They must make or break financially on their own.
Almost certainly, it will become obvious after a few years that quality has suffered. They will all be as vanilla as USA Congress.
Eventually the Congress events will be spun off back to the Regions.
At the same time, independent education events like Jeff Metzger’s Boot Camp will thrive.
No doubt good people at USA Gymnastics believe they can improve Congress events. Let’s see them prove me wrong.
Niki Tom: The most difficult aspect about the transition from club gymnastics to college gymnastics is the dramatic change in training styles. Practices are limited in the sense that we are restricted to 20 hours/week and therefore cannot train as long as we would like. I personally had to learn the rule of less numbers while making each turn count! The transition related to gymnastics has not been extremely hard, for making gymnastics a team sport rather than an individual sport has made training an unbelievable and rejuvenating experience. …
Gymnastics Coaching.com 