This past Saturday, my 10 year old daughter just won a Level 6 Junior Olympic state title and is a top 15 US all around gymnast! She would love to get a scholarship to A&M! Guess we have a few more years to work that issue out and get a team on the books.

Well, our club team was club national champions.

Get her into diving. Usually, gymnasts make a really good transition, and we have a diving team!

Congrats to her.

Thanks goblue. That's where a few of our fallen comrades have ended up...and have done quite well for a fact. Hopefully she will keep winning the mental and physical battles and work her way up to elite and possibly a shot at the national team. If she doesn't and moves to diving, her mom and I would have no problem seeing in the pool diving for the Aggies.

There is almost zero chance A&M would add women's gymnastics. No money. There are only four teams in the Big12 with women's gymnastics - none in Texas.

My daughter competed in gymnastics through level 7, trained at level 8 but we decided the training step up to compete in level 8 was too much. Most of the girls we knew at level 8 were private or home schooled. The gym had its own accredited school for elite gymnastics. That was not gonna work for us.

So my daughter is a diver!

[This message has been edited by SpicewoodAg (edited 11/23/2009 3:03p).]

My kiddo is home schooled. She trains 27 hours a week right now. She will be doing level 7/8 next. She was doing her tsukahara as a level 5 and is perfecting her yurchenko right now as well as a slew of other level 8 stuff. Talented kid, just trying to keep her from getting burned out.

Yea, I tend to agree on us not getting a team. It would be great not to see her wearing red or crimson though if the gets through 10 and lands a D1 scholarship!

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There is almost zero chance A&M would add women's gymnastics. No money. There are only four teams in the Big12 with women's gymnastics - none in Texas.

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Must be why they want a women's bowling team.

I'd love to see us add gymnastics. There's some good gymnasts in this state and they have one in-state option- TWU (who have a darn good program).

I don't think there is a big issue with scheduling and travel and what not...we've got OU, Arkansas, LSU, TWU, etc... in the immediate region.

Centenary in Louisiana has a program, too.

Try to get in with them, along with our conference foes and maybe in on an event in D/FW or something. Obviously you're going to do some traveling but nothing worse than equestrian, who has Baylor or out of state teams.

As you build the program, you can try to venture into SEC country and what not without completely killing your travel budget.

With an athletics program that has matured to where ours has, the only time sports will be added are when they must be to comply with Title IX. And then, only the cheapest sports will be added. Don't know the quality of equipment that the club team has, but probably not up to quality for D-1. Also, insurance for gymnastics has to be nosebleed expensive, right? High risks of injury?

Anyone know how many scholarships/how many athletes are on a typical collegiate gymnastics team?

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With an athletics program that has matured to where ours has, the only time sports will be added are when they must be to comply with Title IX

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We already comply with Title IX. The athletic department would still like to expand the sports if possible. This is something that has been said several times.

Now we are limited, I believe, to adding a women's sport first to continue to look good with Title IX.

We might be "mature", but like most departments in this part of the country, we don't offer many varsity sports compared to what you see on the east and west coast. I think departments would like to expand as athletic budgets have soared in recent years (I know programs in tough times right now due to the recent economic "collapse"

Perhaps a sport like Bowling or re-adding archery or shooting could be good. Maybe wrestling, since there are other Big XII schools that sponsor it. Water Polo might have a shot, if you can get a few other schools in the conference to sponsor it as well. Cheap Sports.

[This message has been edited by AGBlastoff (edited 11/23/2009 11:08p).]

2011, that's kinda what I meant. If we did add another sport, just to expand our program, I don't think gymnastics would be the one. High costs (maybe?), and the top athletes don't make it to the college level. They either burn out, hit a growth spurt, are on the National Team, or injure the crap out of themselves. And the ones that defy the odds and are still competing at a top level by the time they hit 20,21,22 only go to a select handful of universities.

I'd rather see a sport where we know we have a chance at attracting the best.

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Perhaps a sport like Bowling or re-adding archery or shooting could be good. Maybe wrestling, since there are other Big XII schools that sponsor it. Water Polo might have a shot, if you can get a few other schools in the conference to sponsor it as well. Cheap Sports.

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Just my personal thoughts,

Wrestling won't happen unless you add a women's sport alongside it. Anyways, there are not anymore teams in this region that sponsor wrestling than gymnastics. Only one more Big 12 team, as well, I believe.

There is no men's or women's water polo team within 1,000 miles of here and there's no way you can coordinate the addition of it with schools. It would make more sense to add a sport aleady established in the region.

I'm fairly certain it'll be women's bowling that is added first. Only 5 scholarships there, although facilities expenses might add up.


As far as gymnastics, maybe I'm just biased (dated a girl and good friends with another on our gymnastics team , but we've got some pretty good gymnasts here. I look at the roster at OU and I see some girls who have spent multiple years with the national team and what not. There is a =surprisingly good level of talent, imo, in gymnastics.

Now, it is a sport for the young if there ever is one, but I think a lot of the girls can still put on a show. It's not like their bodies just fall apart when they turn 20.

I also don't think the facilities cost is going to be that huge. As far as the injury problem, we've got an army of trainers and what not around. They could handle gymnastics. The problem is the scholarship limit being at 12...that makes it more expensive.

[This message has been edited by TXAggie2011 (edited 11/24/2009 10:50a).]

The athletic department is operating at a deficit right now. It has to repay the loan Byrne received via Robert Gates.

Until that is settled I wouldn't get hopes up for much that is new.

I don't understand. I thought that once a girl was old enough to be in college, she was past the age of competitive gymnastics. Aren't most of those girls in the olympics about 15?

...and after going to the Olympics as a teenager, they go to college to compete and get an education. One of the stars of our last gold medal winning team just finished up at Georgia.

Isn't Byrne a big fan of women's gymnastics??? I could swear I read that in a WW once and that he hoped to have a team someday.

Liukin was about to turn 19 when she won the Gold in Beijing.

Gymnasts compete under Junior Olympic Gymnastics guidelines where there are 11 levels with levels 1-3 being early developmental (ages 3-4 typically), levels 4-6 being the compulsory levels whereas the gymnasts must compete on all 4 apparatuses executing a specific list of skills mandated for each level (typically ages 5-10 but can find girls even of high school age completing in the level 6 bracket), and levels 7-10 and Elite which are considered the optional levels where the girls will compete on all 4 apparatuses but with personalized routines developed by the coaches and choreographers (typically ages 10 - 18 but can see a few younger and a few older as illustrated in the 2004 games where the US had a 24 year old gymnast on the team).

Girls can be offered scholarships to Div II and Div III as early as level 9 and Div I at level 10 and Elite. A gymnast must qualify for the Elite level before being able to complete in the larger national meets like the Visa National Championships. Marta Karolyi and staff choose from these Elite gymnasts. the members of the Junior and Senior National Teams. 16 make the Junior and 12 make the Senior. A gymnast must be 16 or turn 16 that same year to be selected to the Senior team. These are the girls that get the shot at making the Olympic Team. They can still be enrolled in college and compete at the Elite level, but this take a great amount of time as training at the Elite level requires typically 36-40 hours a week whereas a college gymnast is limited to around 22 hours a week of practice (Div I rules).

If a girl makes it to the Elite level (about 200 girls are considered Elite out of the 80000 or so girls that compete under the JO program rules), you can bet she will be offered a scholarship to any school that houses a gymnastics team. A girl can compete under the JO program until she is ready to quit (could be 20 years of age or older) and still get offered a full ride should she want to pursue the college route.

Sorry for the long winded post. Hope this answers some questions.

[This message has been edited by RhinoVic (edited 11/30/2009 12:16p).]

[This message has been edited by TeeShirt RedAss (edited 12/1/2009 9:57a).]

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Isn't Byrne a big fan of women's gymnastics??? I could swear I read that in a WW once and that he hoped to have a team someday.

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I'd say the opposite. He discussed gymnastics and wrestling at one of his state of the department speeches a few years ago.

Basically said they are the most expensive non rev. sports in a department. Basically due to all the injuries and related medical cost associated with those injuries.

Said he'd like to add bowling or beach volleyball. They'd be cheap.

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Basically said they are the most expensive non rev. sports in a department.

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Per the NCAA's revenue reports, it's a lot more complicated than that.

First and foremost, they're not the most expensive non-revenue sports and more importantly, they're not operating with the highest deficits.

Well....it is very complicated. But as someone who has done extensive research into the NCAA revenue reports (unless you're talking about different reports) the public ones are almost useless for comparing between different sports, because of the way different schools report their data publicly.

I don't really feel like getting into all the different contingencies, but I'm sure we can all think of them. This doesn't mean that gymnastics and wrestling are the most expensive, nor does it mean that they aren't. Just mean that the revenue reports might be inconclusive.

Coming from a school with both gymnastics and wrestling, I've gotta believe what BB says about it. Unless he has some hidden agenda to get bowling and beach volleyball here...I think it'd be hard to argue that there are any 2 cheaper sports than those.

I'm talking about the 200whatever page report for the NCAA that breaks sports and divisions down along with other reports.

At any rate, I'm not saying gymnastics or wrestling don't cost a heck of a lot more than bowling or sand volleyball.

[This message has been edited by TXAggie2011 (edited 12/2/2009 12:18p).]