I think this has been the conundrum cheerleading has faced for many years. Often a team with great execution is also seen as playing it safe. A team with crazy difficulty is seen as risking safety. IMO if appropriate credit was given for difficulty AND deductions were given for technique instead of giving technique a pass because it was impressive or so difficult, it would even everything out.
Case point 1. A couple week I had an athlete competing a new pass in power tumbling. Normally the pass she throws ROBHSx3 Tuck is a 1.2 difficulty. She competed a ROBHS Whip BHS Tuck which is a 1.4 difficulty. She received the points for difficulty, but she was nailed on technique because she threw what I call a cheer whip - BHS with no hands feet behind you when you land absorb and push thru. The pass is connected but not powerful or dynamic. The deductions were appropriate. So even though the athlete and parents were disappointed in the score, they could celebrate that she competed a new pass - one in which she missed at her last competition and then suffered an injury from school cheer which kept her out of practice for 2 months.
Case Point 2. A few years ago we had a Level 5 team compete at a major event with Worlds bids on the line. We already had an At large bid going into the event and had no expectation of getting the full paid bid. Day 1 we hit perfect. Zero deductions. Nothing but praise on score sheets. Sitting in first place. Again - no expectation on our part. We knew what teams should win the division and we were just happy we hit. We even got called to the judges stand because we had not filled out a bid declaration for that event.
Day 2 we hit perfect again. Zero deductions. But score was markedly lower. Again we had no problem with placements. We knew who would win if they hit. They didn't hit day 1, they hit day 2. But with our score being lower than Day 1 naturally we asked what was going on. We were told by EP that it was decided by them and the judges after Day 1 that we were overscored on day 1 so they had to adjust on day 2. The reason being that our routine while Level 5 was not as difficult as others in the division. That if they had taken that into account we would of been much lower on Day 1. The EP said to our face we should be lucky that we even had a bid and that we were the only Small Coed team with no BHS to Doubles going to Worlds. That our routine was too easy so of course we could hit it perfectly. Actually we had 7 BHS to Doubles but we did not throw them because we went for the technique score instead of the difficulty score. We knew we would get deductions if we threw them so we went with the best routine with aiming for highest perfection and technique. Secondly if we were told after Day 1 it was an issue that would drop our score so much, and that they would not apply the same standard to everyone in our division and re-score them as well, we would of told the athletes that had them to throw them instead of the BHSx2 Full. That knocked us out of a full paid Worlds bid not only at the event but when they found an extra bid to give. If the scoring was right across the board we would of had a paid Worlds Bid that year.
We haven't been back to that event or any event run by that particular person. Every time their reps call us to come back we tell them when we have squad BHS to Doubles we will be back and maybe we will get scored right.
This is one of the reasons I say getting it right matters. To somebody it was just an event. Fight again another day. To somebody else the right team won so what does it matter. To somebody else it would be lets go back and prove them wrong, when in reality we were right the first time. To us that would of been a Full paid bid, the first in our region to have one and a major accomplishment for our program.