Reply to Arlington proposing to close county gymnastics program

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Lots of kids in competitive sports drive to other jurisdictions to participate in teams based on lack of availability in Arlington.  Its not some god given right that your sport will have a competitive team that’s nearby.[/quote]

Exactly! We've been driving my son to PG county Maryland for the past 4-5 years for his chosen travel sport. Arlington taxpayers should not have to subsidize a small (relative to county size) group of elite gymnasts [b]when it does not subsidize or provide free fields for other rec or travel sports. [/b]That said, I think the county can still offer gymnastics and charge enough to hire good instructors and maintain a section of the facility.[/quote]

Eh hem, (cough) swim. Looking at the $3m subsidy to Long Bridge with basically no increase to AAC fees this year, despite fees being far, far below market rate compared to comparable programs.[/quote]

As has been extensively discussed on this thread, swim is more than a niche youth sport. Long Bridge is used for water safety classes, exercise classes (especially for the elderly or people with joint and mobility programs), learn-to-swim for kids (a safety measure that saves lives), AND competitive swim. The gymnastics program is not comparable. Gymnastics, especially at the level that Bancroft is designed for (competitive, high level, teen gymnastics) is inherently dangerous in a way that a pool is not, and the Barcroft facility cannot easily serve a wide range of ages and needs the way the pool at Long Bridge can. Sure, there are adult and toddler and adaptive gymnastics programs at Barcroft, but none of them fully use the facility. The facility was built to suit high level competitive gymnasts and then it is sometimes partially used for other purposes. Whereas Long Bridge was built to serve the entire community, and the competitive team simply uses it they way a competitive team might use any pool. It wasn't built for them.[/quote]

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