All-Star Combining Vs Splitting Divisions In Cheerleading

[King]

With the discussion of splitting out D1 vs D2 at Worlds I thought it was worthwhile to discuss how we currently do divisons in cheerleading when thinking about the makeup of team / age / skill level / and gym size. In general everyone wants to feel like they are getting a fair shot. Not a guaranteed win (because that is boring and people won't continue to pay all this cheer money for boring) entering a contest that a person feels like they have a legitimate shot at winning. To level the playing field we have created all sorts of different ways to make different teams and divisions. So much division in fact that lots of places teams are doing recitals (aka competing against no one) and then competitions are looking at how to combine divisions to have more people to compete against. Besides having a universal and consistent scoresheet so people can compare how well they are doing to different teams across the country (which is a very important part of all this) what if we changed our thinking. What if instead of having all these subdivisions that we combine if there arent enough teams we think of having these main 'vanilla' divisions we split if there are enough teams to make the split divisions with?

It changes ones thinking. You go into a competition knowing you might be a small gym competing against a mega gym (or vice versa) and you are ok with that because you know what you are getting. It encourages people to seek out more competition and be more competitive with others. What do you all think?

 

[CGAcheer]

With the discussion of splitting out D1 vs D2 at Worlds I thought it was worthwhile to discuss how we currently do divisons in cheerleading when thinking about the makeup of team / age / skill level / and gym size. In general everyone wants to feel like they are getting a fair shot. Not a guaranteed win (because that is boring and people won't continue to pay all this cheer money for boring) entering a contest that a person feels like they have a legitimate shot at winning. To level the playing field we have created all sorts of different ways to make different teams and divisions. So much division in fact that lots of places teams are doing recitals (aka competing against no one) and then competitions are looking at how to combine divisions to have more people to compete against. Besides having a universal and consistent scoresheet so people can compare how well they are doing to different teams across the country (which is a very important part of all this) what if we changed our thinking. What if instead of having all these subdivisions that we combine if there arent enough teams we think of having these main 'vanilla' divisions we split if there are enough teams to make the split divisions with?

It changes ones thinking. You go into a competition knowing you might be a small gym competing against a mega gym (or vice versa) and you are ok with that because you know what you are getting. It encourages people to seek out more competition and be more competitive with others. What do you all think?

thats kind of the way that it already is with Large/small split, they aren't split until there is enough to have at least 2 teams in each division after the split unless there is a gym with both, then its split automatically.
You could potentially increase the threshold for the split to get the desired effect.

 

[King]

thats kind of the way that it already is with Large/small split, they aren't split until there is enough to have at least 2 teams in each division after the split unless there is a gym with both, then its split automatically.
You could potentially increase the threshold for the split to get the desired effect.

Gyms that meet certain criteria can get split up even further.

 

[ShutItDown]

I wouldnt want to be in the d2 division as an athlete, if we win it still wouldnt be as fulfilling as beating a top mega gym. Also if we were a small gym and we scored higher than the d1 champ i would feel like it wasnt fair that we were placed d2. At nca i noticed a lot of smaller gyms surfacing in lower levels and beating mega gyms so id like to see it stay the same. For smaller comps, sure, it stinks we have no teams in our division, but realistically all we use them for is a recital to prepare for Jamfest Nationals, Cheerport, NCA, UCA, Worlds. There are also way too many "national champions" so having more at a different level wouldnt be as rewarding. Worlds wise
Overall I feel like the way things are now is perfect. Id love to go back to just small, large, small coed, large coed and not in bwteen or 4.2's, but for all the evolution thats happened im very happy with the way things are now and wouldnt wanna see any change. This has nothing to do with d1 or d2 but when the small large all girl thing was an issue and there were only 3 teams in large all girl and large coed we all wanted to smaller numbers and such for more comeptition, but some how now we have like 8 teams in large all girl and the large coed is becoming a huge division, so idk how it happened but i would just like to say im in love with the division system for the National.Worlds comps...but just my preference i use the smaller local comps as practices/trying to beat local gyms to keep the local rep up.