This weekend is the big gymnastics meet, the Coach’s cup. Molly competes tomorrow. Claudine and I had the pleasure of working the event today. I said pleasure because it was kind of neat.
Molly is new to this so for us a lot of these experiences are new, though we can see they can and probably will get old rather quickly.
Web-Logging is a unique and wonderful thing. It allows us to share our experiences and thoughts with folks all over the world. It can be a powerful tool. Those who know me know I don’t really care all that much what people think. I have my opinions and they can often be strong. This post might be one of them.
We are very, very fortunate to have a gym as high caliber as Cincinnati Gymnastics in our area. We really really are. There are folks that have moved here from all over to attend CGA. There are folks that work for CGA who have moved here just so their daughters can have a chance to make the national team. The gym is that good.
There are two parts to the story though. There is CGA the for-profit business entity which employs the coaches and runs the facility, for which we pay a monthly fee for our gymnast to attend and there is the non-for profit parents club which pays for everything else (meet fees, leo’s and all kinds of other things). We have to pay this too but we also have to fund-raise a portion of this. To level the playing field and to ‘ensure’ you can’t buy success, all parents have to participate in certain activities. You earn points by fund raising and volunteering, etc. If you don’t earn your points you are penalized financially (go figure). So if you’re in the dough and don’t want to fund raise, guess what? Don’t do it you can buy your way out. I’m ok with this. The cost is about the same, and it does give those who can’t afford it an opportunity to fund raise. Just don’t spin it as ‘leveling the playing field’.
