All-Star Cheer Teams At Worlds

[Roni]

yes yes yes! and this (sorry) pisses me off so much! tumbling is a huge part of cheer, it kills me that USASF tries to baby sit the people across the country. no offense at all to the people who aren't cheering in the U.S., but if you can't beat them, that's not our fault. which is another reason why i hate the three team per country rule, there are so many great U.S. IOC teams that don't get to place because a team from Australia scored a 79.68 and was top for their country. i believe in being fair for everyone but this isn't being fair IMO.
once again, no offense to anyone on the boards, just stating my personal opinion.

I cheer in Germany, and we don't have the equitment you guys have, we don't even have a gym with a spring floor. Our coaches are also volunteers. I used to live in the USA and I did competitive gymnastics there. If they train the cheerleaders in the USA close to the way they train gymnasts, you have a much bigger advantage than any team here. Not only that, but a lot of parents here don't support there child doing cheer, or they will say that it costs to much. So there goes the support from our parents (of course not all parents are like that, it is just what I experienced on my team). Going back to the tumbling statement, a lot of the gyms only have deadmats, allthough our compitions are on spring floors. If we were able to train on spring floors than we would have better tumbling. I personaly can only throw an ugly roundoff backhandspring layout on a dead mat where as too a spring floor I would be able to throw a punch-front, roundoff, whip, full. You honestly have no idea how lucky you guys are to be ablt to have parents that will pay for all of this for you and that will drive hours to a gym. You are so lucky to even have a gym and have all the equiptment you have. So maybe instead of critizing teams from other countries telling us to keep up, give us a chance to show you what we are able to achieve even though we do not have the equiptment and support you do. Even though you said no offence, I honestly do think its offencive.

 

[luv2cheer92]

I cheer in Germany, and we don't have the equitment you guys have, we don't even have a gym with a spring floor. Our coaches are also volunteers. I used to live in the USA and I did competitive gymnastics there. If they train the cheerleaders in the USA close to the way they train gymnasts, you have a much bigger advantage than any team here. Not only that, but a lot of parents here don't support there child doing cheer, or they will say that it costs to much. So there goes the support from our parents (of course not all parents are like that, it is just what I experienced on my team). Going back to the tumbling statement, a lot of the gyms only have deadmats, allthough our compitions are on spring floors. If we were able to train on spring floors than we would have better tumbling. I personaly can only throw an ugly roundoff backhandspring layout on a dead mat where as too a spring floor I would be able to throw a punch-front, roundoff, whip, full. You honestly have no idea how lucky you guys are to be ablt to have parents that will pay for all of this for you and that will drive hours to a gym. You are so lucky to even have a gym and have all the equiptment you have. So maybe instead of critizing teams from other countries telling us to keep up, give us a chance to show you what we are able to achieve even though we do not have the equiptment and support you do. Even though you said no offence, I honestly do think its offencive.

I'm not the other poster that you quoted, but I'll add my opinion in. I have zero problem with these teams from other countries competing at Worlds, I actually think it's fantastic and I love seeing the progress that teams have made over the years. What I do have a problem with is (using an example from last year) teams that score a 66/150 making FINALS at Worlds over teams scoring 127/150 just because of where they are from. I understand that it is very expensive to get to the US for Worlds to only compete one time, but the USASF/IASF Worlds should not be about gym location, that's what ICU Worlds is for. I hate that some of my favorite teams get left out of finals because they are in 4th or 5th place overall, but the 45th place team overall makes it through. Either get rid of the rule altogether or give some kind of score to beat to make it through. Someone on here had the idea of top 10 overall then top 3 from each country, I could definitely get behind that.

 

[Belinda]

yes yes yes! and this (sorry) pisses me off so much! tumbling is a huge part of cheer, it kills me that USASF tries to baby sit the people across the country. no offense at all to the people who aren't cheering in the U.S., but if you can't beat them, that's not our fault. which is another reason why i hate the three team per country rule, there are so many great U.S. IOC teams that don't get to place because a team from Australia scored a 79.68 and was top for their country. i believe in being fair for everyone but this isn't being fair IMO.
once again, no offense to anyone on the boards, just stating my personal opinion.

We practice AND compete on dead floor. Aloooooot of teams don't even have dead mats, they have the school gym mats and that's it. They don't even get to run their routine full out until the day of competition because they can't build up a full floor with the few mats they have. We don't have tumble tracks, we don't have air floors, heck we don't even have cheese mats (most of us). There are a few fortunate gyms over here that have access to gymnastics gyms, but they are really few. And we have the same problem with parents, they think it's way too expensive. We have a super low yearly fee, and on that there's travel fees for regionals and nationals if we're not lucky and they're in our home town. For regionals last year it was about $20, and for nationals about $120, because we really empited our budget to help cover the costs, this still got resistance.. I coach two teams, and I'm on two teams, I literally have Saturdays off, on that I'm a member of our board, and I get $0, for any of it. We all do it for free, it's all non profit. It's not fair to expect us to be at the same level as you. At all. Stunting, we're getting there, but tumbling we're decades behind.

 

[Roni]

I'm not the other poster that you quoted, but I'll add my opinion in. I have zero problem with these teams from other countries competing at Worlds, I actually think it's fantastic and I love seeing the progress that teams have made over the years. What I do have a problem with is (using an example from last year) teams that score a 66/150 making FINALS at Worlds over teams scoring 127/150 just because of where they are from. I understand that it is very expensive to get to the US for Worlds to only compete one time, but the USASF/IASF Worlds should not be about gym location, that's what ICU Worlds is for. I hate that some of my favorite teams get left out of finals because they are in 4th or 5th place overall, but the 45th place team overall makes it through. Either get rid of the rule altogether or give some kind of score to beat to make it through. Someone on here had the idea of top 10 overall then top 3 from each country, I could definitely get behind that.

I agree that the top 10 and then the top three from each country is a good idea. I was just a bit annoyed that teams outside the USA don't get enough credit, espeacialy since most kids don't have the opportunity to train like you do in the US.

 

[XtremeWpg]

1) You can't say "then do ICU". That would be like saying, well everyone in America or Canada, make your national team and go. It's not exactly attainable.

2) Then there should be an alternate to IO divisions for American teams or programs who can field a stronger team. Basically make it Senior and Open for club divisions, then International Open for programs that are developing but still receive bids to attend. American teams who have athletes over the age of 18 can continue to compete, without the 3 per country thing that creates a lot of havoc. I suppose the argument would then be more divisions=more teams=more time etc. But I would imagine that a lot of IO American teams would switch if this were a thing.

I don't know, I'm just making things up as someone from a country that's behind the USA, but ahead of a lot of other countries as far as cheer development.

I've always thought it was strange that for some reason, cheer was supposed to just stop when you're done high school, unless you do collegiate, which isn't really big in most countries outside the USA.

 

[meetmeat_themat]

I can confirm the lack of support in the UK. We have had to fundraise for every piece of equipment we have, and as a university team this is minimal. The university will pump thousands into rugby, football, GAA (irish sports similar to lacrosse, football and rugby) and hockey but we get minimal support and took over two years to be even classified as a sports team. We don't have parents helping us financially and as students can't afford much ourselves. We make do with two rolls of thin matting and six school gym style mats so even ex-gymnasts with high level tumbling skills can't do much more than a handspring or a walkover on our current footing.

I'm not an expert at the US system but for the teams in this category where only the top 3 get through, do they have other competitions they can do under the same classification? If not I can totally understand the frustration of having say 20 very high level teams when only 3 can compete.

 

[Roni]

I can confirm the lack of support in the UK. We have had to fundraise for every piece of equipment we have, and as a university team this is minimal. The university will pump thousands into rugby, football, GAA (irish sports similar to lacrosse, football and rugby) and hockey but we get minimal support and took over two years to be even classified as a sports team. We don't have parents helping us financially and as students can't afford much ourselves. We make do with two rolls of thin matting and six school gym style mats so even ex-gymnasts with high level tumbling skills can't do much more than a handspring or a walkover on our current footing.

I'm not an expert at the US system but for the teams in this category where only the top 3 get through, do they have other competitions they can do under the same classification? If not I can totally understand the frustration of having say 20 very high level teams when only 3 can compete.

We also have a lot of the same issues, for every euro we need for a compition, we have to have a fundraiser or we perform at events for money. I can also relate to the mat issue, I used to be a gymnast (level 7 training 8 when I stopped) and on the mats we have I barley can do a layout and other girls that can do layouts and fulls on spring floors struggel doing a backtuck on these mats.

 

[_MRB]

first off.... my parents don't pay for me to cheer. never have.
second, i never thought cheer was supposed to stop after high school, i thought it was supposed to stop after you decide to finish,
third... understanding that you guys may not have the resources, okay... and like i really don't want to be deemed as "that guy" but... it's necessarily not our fault. like the people in the U.S. that can no longer afford cheer because the rates skyrocket each year, it's not their fault they can't afford it. it just bugs me that there are certain teams that get third literally scoring .05 under a team that was in third and they can't go to finals because a score from across the world was the highest in their country (even though that score barely reached a 130). how you would feel if that happened??? oh try again next year? that hurts lol, believe it or not.

being that tumbling at worlds in the IO divisions is only 15%.... stunting is scored SOOOO much more, yet i don't see too many of the IOC teams doing the same stunts as us, you don't need any equipment to stunt, baskets maybe yes; when it comes to the level 6 division, but you don't need any equipment to practice any level 5 stunting skills. i'm not trying to say you guys are making excuses, i'm really not, i understand it's not the same across the world, but there are teams in the U.S. that are experiencing the same exact thing you guys are and they try to make it work (not saying you guys don't but you get the idea).

and responding to MeetMeat_TheMat, only worlds does the three per country rule, because NCA isn't really a "world" competition. but not everyone can afford NCA, so not everyone goes.

OH, and everyone's family isn't willing to drive 1.5 hours there and back for their kids to cheer for a certain gym. my parents barely wanted to drive me to a gym 45 minutes away for privates.
Once again, just stating my opinion, not trying to hurt anyone's feelings.

 

[_MRB]

Someone on here had the idea of top 10 overall then top 3 from each country, I could definitely get behind that.

that could work as well, gives everyone a better chance.