<p>Gymnastics is a whole different ball of wax than most other sports. To compete at the DI level, a gymnast is usually a level 10 or elite. This requires an average of 24 hours/week of training, year-round. At most gyms, this is a 6-day a week commitment. You generally get one week off per year. Most high level gymnasts train these hours for all of their middle and high school years (and often much earlier than that). My own daughter was an elite gymnast and trained 36 hours per week from 5th-8th grade. Many very high-level gymnasts don’t even attend school; they home school instead because USAG (the governing body of gymnastics in the United States) insists on two a day training sessions for elite gymnasts. </p>
<p>As you can see, it is not like most collegiate sports. Nonetheless, it seems most of these girls are perfectionists and extremely organized as well. My daughter did all of her homework in the car. She left school early every day to make it to her gym which was 45 minutes away from our home. </p>
<p>I can understand the OP’s concern. There are certainly gifted children who are able to balance it all. Yale, Brown, Cornell, UPenn, and Stanford all have gymnastics teams. The Ivies are fairly weak in the sport, but they do field full teams. Stanford, though not an Ivy, manages to field an extremely competitive team. MIT also has a gymnastics team which competes DIII. Do you think your daughter can balance it all? There is always a little bit of give in the AI for a highly recruited athlete. What level is your daughter now? Is she truly recruitable (in gymnastics, you generally know this by 8th grade). What does her coach say? Why does it have to be an Ivy? </p>
<p>I would not force her to quit gymnastics if she loves it. She has to be able to pursue what she loves. It would have killed my daughter to quit. If you have questions, please feel free to contact me; I have lots of knowledge about gymnastics and DI (my daughter currently competes for a DI program).</p>