you work just as hard? fair enough. but you have the facilities in front of you.. you have an easy cheering life. my team doesn't have a sprung floor. and a gym coach we see once a week.. not even on a full sprung floor. a tumble track and old gym floor.
This is why the international score sheet is the way it is, and the division is the way it is. Think how hard we have to work to try keep up to your standards in the US.. I can assure you that 9/10 teams in the states see an international team name on the scoresheet from say Europe and not quiver one bit. How do you think we feel when it's the other way around, seeing ourselves against GT, CA, etc? It is a somewhat daunting experience stepping out on the mat against such high-profile gyms.
Gaining skills having persevered for so long without the correct (or the same) facilities as the teams we will be against.. and then making it to worlds and placing top 10 (in some cases top 5).. shows that all that hard work and pushing past all the obstacles pays off. I'm not talking about my team, but all international teams. scores are scores. they differ from panel to panel (as we seen in sml snr day 1 where the judging panel were more harsh than in other divisions). if you go out, hit that routine to the best of your ability and score a decent enough score compared to the other teams in your division, then trust me when I say it all pays off. my team could place out the top 10 at worlds and walk away happy if we knew we'd gone out there and hit and performed that routine to the best of our ability. rest assured we don't care who thinks what about our score - cause it is OUR score that WE have gained, and ours and ours alone to analyse and work on. we set our targets - and if we reach them, we are delighted, and set our sights higher from then on - and if we don't reach our targets we take the experience home with us and work on it to improve