- Jun 17, 2011
- 23
- 12
The rules that the US currently uses were developed as the US cheerleading industry developed and therefore always tried to match what was happening at that paticular point in time. Countries which are new to the sport, need that same developmental time too, and need rules which suit what is currenty occuring in their country. To say that all countries should use the US rules is seeing things in a very black and white way. Other countries are moving towads the same rules/scoring/divisions as the US but it will take time to get there. This argument is similar to the 'dirty power' argument that appears in current affairs discussions in that developing countries can't be expected to be held to the same high level of clean power generation that developed countries (which have already gone through the dirty power generation phase). If they were to have to have clean power generation, their development would be seriously slowed or perhaps even discontinued.
Two prime examples from Australia.
1. Australia's scoresheets have a much heavier weighting on stunting and less of a weighting on tumbling. Reason: Participants can generally develop stunting skills much more quickly than tumbling skills if starting at a later age. A lot of cheer teams in Aus are 14+ with a lot of people starting at 16 or 17 years of age (though the age is dropping). It is very difficult to develop tumbling skills at this age. If teams had to limit their level because of their tumble ability, then most teams would be level 1. Level 1 isnt exciting stunting wise and hence I would think that the sport would die. As the younger girls come up through the ranks I expect that the emphasis on stunt/tumble would shift to be similar to the US. Cheer tumble coaches are also very difficult to find and therefore most cheer teams have gymnastics coaches (which tends to mean very slow progress).
2. Australia has an open age division for all levels. This stems from the fact that the pickup into this sport was intially at the older age group level. These new cheerleaders couldn't possibly go straight into level 5 and hence the need to develop low level open team divisions arose. The open age division is often has the strongest teams (though again, this will change as the younger cheerleaders who started learning to tumble at a lower age come up through the ranks).
Just my thoughts on the topic. I am only a cheerleader in Australia and these are my thinkings but may not be correct.
