Winter Showcase

If you're on Facebook, you've seen my updates complaining about Winter Showcase. Basically, we started the girls at a private gymnastics center called Flying High. And man, is this place a freaking racket! Keep in mind that I did gymnastics (albeit not private) for years and years. So I tend to think I know a little bit about gymnastics. These lessons are not cheap by any means. And that's to be expected. But what I was not expecting was Winter Showcase, a gymnastics exhibition that cost a whopping $30 per student. Keep in mind that my children are six and three and "performed" for a whopping total of 30 seconds. Initially, I thought I could keep the Winter Showcase thing on the DL and just not sign the girls up. Unfortunately, the instructors were hawking Winter Showcase like it was the ultimate in coolness. Plus, there was the whole trophy thing. When I suggested we would not be doing Winter Showcase, Ella was devastated. The folks at Flying High did a good job--my kid was so excited about Winter Showcase that she was telling anyone and everyone about it for months ahead of time. How could I not sign her up? Well done, Flying High. This, combined with your concession stand, your overpriced leotard/toy shop, and your unfriendly instructors who have never once even introduced themselves to me (but HAVE talked to me to hawk Winter Showcase) have definitely combined to make me think about changing gyms. Seriously, you guys kind of suck. I was also not happy AT ALL about the fact that my three-year-old left Friday's practice bemoaning the fact that she was not reaching forward after her forward roll and believing that no one at Winter Showcase would clap for her. Granted, Sadie is sensitive like that, but I really think we're maybe placing too much emphasis on the freaking forward roll if my three-year-old came away from practice believing she needed to practice for the rest of the day.

But, but, but. I will admit that Winter Showcase was nicely done. And I would gladly have paid, say, $15 a kid without complaining (too much). (But seriously--$30 per kid was an insane amount of money for this exhibition, and you should be ashamed of yourselves.)

[Okay, I'm done complaining about the cost of Winter Showcase--at least for the rest of this post.]

I didn't know ahead of time (okay, just a tiny bit more complaining after all) that the girls would be scheduled for different times on the same day, which meant that we spent two hours at the gym in the morning watching Sadie "compete" and get her trophy and two hours in the afternoon watching Ella. Still, it was nicely organized and very professionally run. While the girls were warming up, the parents were treated to different exhibitions by other groups at Flying High--cheerleading, the tumbling team, etc. (Also, it's noteworthy given my recent music post that the cheer exhibition for the eight-year-old squad was performed--at least partially--to Tik-Tok, though they did cut out the bit about good, old Jack Daniels.) The girls did a great job, and if you're interested in watching the videos, let me know, and I'll send you an invite to the links at Picasa. They were thrilled to pieces with the trophy presentation ceremony, too. I liked that the "judges" wrote a little bit about each girl's performance, which was then stuck to the bottom of the trophy so the praise could be read as the trophy was presented. They called Ella's cartwheels "phenomenal" and told her she rocked. I can't remember what they said about Sadie. I'd hoped they'd praise her forward rolls, but I am not sure they specifically mentioned them.

Here are some photos of the cuteness that was Winter Showcase (incidentally, I got the leotards for $4 apiece, so I'm pretending that the leotards were $30 a kid and Winter Showcase was $4 a kid).