All-Star Tryout Process

[BlockHead]

Here's a question: does your gym require any payment (other than a try-out fee) before giving a level placement? CP's gym is asking for partial payment of comp fee's, uniform etc before a level placement is given. This is a red flag to me.

Our gym does. But comp fees are part of the monthly tuition.

 

[cheermomforever]

Here's a question: does your gym require any payment (other than a try-out fee) before giving a level placement? CP's gym is asking for partial payment of comp fee's, uniform etc before a level placement is given. This is a red flag to me.

Uniform $ is in July and comp fees are broken into 3 payments in Aug/Sept/oct. only tryout fee was due last week.

 

[alpaca]

I've been giving this some thought. We talk about transparency, right? We all want that from EP's. What about asking for transparency from our gym? I know that gyms want you to commit. And they don't want you gym shopping. But why not? I shop for everything else. If I pay you a try-out fee I expect some type of a result. My kid took a test, I want a grade. I may make some decisions based on that grade.

FTR; I don't plan on leaving our gym and I don't expect my child to change levels this season. But if for some reason she was moved down a level, we would use that information. Maybe we would get her some extra privates/classes/clinics and have her work her *ss off. Or maybe she would decide to try out for a high school sport instead of all star cheer. And I don't like paying several hundreds of dollars before I have the feedback to make those decisions.

 

[CC1107]

We pay a minimal placement fee (I think it was maybe $25? Maybe $35 - basically enough to pay the staff time for evaluation I think). But within 2 days of placements we do have to pay the first month tuition, gym registration and USASF registration fee (plus Booster Club membership!).

That's a lot of money to pay if you don't sign? Is it refunded if you don't? Does it go towards your account if you do?

 

[XtremeWpg]

We do 2 placement dates, athletes only have to attend one. We break it up by age and assess primarily tumbling, flexibility and strength. We're doing one clinic between the 2 placement dates for any kids who didn't train in the summer (we don't do placements until August) for them to get the rust off if they want. We run 1 tumbling and 1 stunting night a week all summer. We don't have our own gym so we're at the mercy of availability of the gymnastics gym we're in. Summer's aren't required, but are obviously recommended. We all want summers off, so we imagine kids and parents do too. Maybe in the future when we have our own space we will have more competitive teams train all summer. But getting back on track....

We place kids on a team, or 2 if they're crossovers, and then we spend the month of September building a skill set for the teams routines and levelling the kids. They're informed if they're a "bubble kid", tho we don't call them that to them. If they can hang with the higher level or older kids, they can stay, but they have to prove that they can handle the team.

We do choreography in October and don't compete until January.

We don't charge any money until after placements. We then open our first tier of payment for about 10 days, then the price goes up, then it goes up again about a week later. We don't give an exact breakdown of where all the money goes. But we do tell parents what is included and try to not have it be that we ask for more money for things later, other than the travel costs and uniform because those are variable.

 

[DonnaM]

You can choose whether to start paying tuition/fees right away, or wait. If you choose to start paying right away, your tryout fee is applied to the first month. You will pay the same amount either way-the only difference is that tryout fee. If you wait, you pay the tryout fee for the evaluation (which includes about a month of group practices), and then sign a contract after the placements are announced. Regardless, you can break the contract without penalty until a set date, which is about a month after teams are announced,so if this just isn’t for you, you have time to figure it out. In our case, we went ahead and started paying-CP wants to cheer, and is perfectly happy staying on the same level/team as last season if that’s how it turns out.