However, if you read the OP, it is the child who has been asking for a grade skip for *2* years... to me, that is a big issue. How do you explain to a child that you do not want to skip simply because they may (or may not!) be a D1 swimmer 6+ years down the road - we don't know what level of passion the OP's child has for swimming over her desire to be grade skipped.
Burnout happens in sports all the time - I see it so often with kids who played a certain sport all the way through high school and just did not want to do it during college. I know of people who were recruited for their sports skills (from D1 to DIII, which does not offer scholarships but where their sports background was a factor in admissions) and then completely drop that sport in college and do a different sport or no sports. I played an indoor sport intensely through high school (travel team, coed team and high school team) and yet when I got to college, I found myself not interested in that sport anymore. Instead I switched to a totally unrelated sport (which I did for many years after college, including placing in top 4 a few times at national team trials).
I'm on my phone and can't reply to everyone in detail at the moment, but I did want to clarify that we haven't refused to grade skip her for 2 years because of swimming. She only recently joined the swim team. When she first asked to skip in 1st grade she had just received entrance to the gt program for 2nd grade and were anticipating that that would be sufficient for her. It was for 2nd grade but not this year.
