This year, since there is no 2nd Qualifier, compulsory gymnasts can qualify to State Championships two ways. (1) Just like qualifying from State to Regional Championships, each Zone will have a predetermined number of gymnasts in each age group based upon the percentage of athletes that each Zone has compared to the amount of gymnasts in each age group in the state. In other words, larger Zones will be able to take more athletes than smaller zones. (2) To make it fair for smaller, but strong Zones, we will also have a qualifying score for gymnasts. This will assure that athletes who have earned the right to attend State Championship do not get left out just because their Zone is small.

Vicki Victor

1613 Willow Avenue

Clovis, CA 93612

Phone: 209-298-0884

E-mail: vvictor@fresnotech.com

As of February 7th, the following clubs have not paid their NCBGA Athlete registration. If you find this list in error, or have recently become current, please contact the NCBGA Treasure Vicki Victor so she can update her records and then inform me. Her new address is listed above.

ZONE 1: Monterey, Pegasus, and Top Flight

ZONE 3: Above & Beyond, G-Force Gymnastics, Gymnastics of Foster City,

and Redwood Empire

ZONE 4: Clovis (and no club registration yet), Golden Bear, and United

Gymnastics of Hanford (and no club registration yet)

As of February 7th, the following clubs have not given any paper work of how many athletes they have and what level their gymnasts are at.

ZONE 2: Woodland

ZONE 4: Golden Bear

It has been brought to my attention that we do not have in our handbook every aspect of what it takes to comprise a team at NCBGA Zone and State Championships. We will use the following procedures that has been used in the past. These procedures will be added to the handbook as competition procedures so we will not have any confusion in the future.

- Three to four athletes in an age group form a team, three scores count.

- One athlete's scores can be added to the scores of two other athletes in a

higher age group, in the same level, only if the club does not already have

three athletes in that higher age group, to be able to form a team.

Example: Your team has 7 class VI (7-9) gymnasts and only 2 class

VI (10-11) gymnasts. You wish to compete for a team banner in each of the

age groups so you designate one of your class VI (7-9) gymnasts, prior to the

competition, to have his score count with your two class VI (10-11) gymnasts to form a class VI (10-11) team. If you already have 3 gymnasts in

the class VI (10-11), you can not move up a younger gymnasts scores.

- Also, as per USAG Rules & Policies Section V,1,D, you can move a gymnast

up one year in age for competition. In other words if you want to compete

your 9 year old class VI in the 10-11 age group, you can. However, if the 9

year old gymnast has qualified from Zone Championship to State

Championships in the 7-9 division, he must compete at State Championship

I have been to some great small and large invitationals this year and I want thank those of you that have contributed to the success of these meets. Over the years I have seen two areas of competitions are of growing concern to me. I am therefore offering these recommendations that I would like you to consider when hosting your next competition.

(1) Awards Ceremonies. To help professionalize, promote our sport, and make the awards ceremonies more meaningful, I would like to see athletes not only in uniform (No base ball caps and other non-uniform clothing), but also to be seated with their team during awards. I have seen gymnasts wrestling, doing handstands, tumbling, and climbing on bars and stacked mats during the awards. Coaches have to share in the blame by allowing their athletes to do this, but it would not take much to assign one parent to control the chaos. I have also seen sisters, brothers, girl friends, parents, and athletes who are not in the session being awarded, sitting on the floor with the athletes during the awards. This seating area should be a honored and privileged area for competing athletes only.

Many invitationals want to award each age, in each age group. This is fine, but the announcer should help shorten the hour (+) award ceremony by just announcing the place and the gymnast, and not add on the club and score. Parents (our customers) are turned off by lengthy award ceremonies and the rug rats become antsy.

(2) Competition Fees. Some competitions are charging outrageous fees, and then adding on a $15 fee for Tee shirts. They do this so they can raise enough money to send their athletes to other expensive competitions. I see this as a self propelling problem. This can hurt the growth of boys gymnastics in our state because many athletes drop out because of the expense of the sport. Girls competitions, who are run by the same booster clubs, can get away with this because gymnastics is the number one sport for girls. Boy's gymnastics suffers because there are many other less expensive sports that parents can put their son's in. I'm afraid booster clubs do not see the whole picture as we do and the growth of our program is suffering.

I realize that many invitationals are directed by Booster clubs and not by the coach, but as the coach you might help direct them in some areas that you may have more insight and expertise. You may not want to direct a competition, but you probably do have more experience and exposure to some of the aspects that make a professionally run competition than the parents at you club.

In closure I would like to reiterate that the competition aspects of the invitationals that I have attended are on track. I would just like you to reevaluate the awards ceremony and financial aspects of your competition so we can have meaningful award ceremonies at competitions that are financially reasonable for all of our gymnasts.