Crazy ideas for improving the all-star industry

[Jessica]

#2 Get rid of Senior Level 4.2! See #4 below for reasons.

agreed



I definitely think the practicality of ages and levels should be taken into account and some divisions gotten rid of. 4.2, Mini 3, and Senior 1 should be gone.

agreed i dislike these divisions and think they should be gone because they dont make a ton of sense imo

 

[xpressjag]

Agree on most of what your saying, but also disagree on a couple.

1. Small gym divisions were developed for a reason. Gyms with very few athletes cannot compete with larger gyms. The all star world is much different than when Cheer Athletics/Top Gun first started and there were few gyms. Now that we have less divisions, most teams always have competition. Only people that usually complain about this is large gyms and they control the industry for the most part. Look at the USASF board next time and see who is on it. Mainly large gym people.

2. Standarized score sheets are not the issue, its people judging. Teams are still not getting placed correctly because judges are not using their grids correctly.

3. I like the fact that we have choices in where we compete and don't have specific events we have to go to. Yes on side there are to many nationals, but on the other we get the freedom as coaches to take our kids to any event and not deal with company issues. Everyone knows NCA,Cheersport and Worlds are the end all be all of cheer.

4. I think the USASF needs to offer more training like USAG does in gymnastics. They have conventions called Congress and they are GREAT. So much education offered and kicks cheer out of the water. If all coaches went, then cheer would be much safer and you would see more gyms with standards in teaching.

 

[kristenthegreat]

#2 Get rid of Senior Level 4.2! See #4 below for reasons.

agreed



I definitely think the practicality of ages and levels should be taken into account and some divisions gotten rid of. 4.2, Mini 3, and Senior 1 should be gone.

agreed i dislike these divisions and think they should be gone because they dont make a ton of sense imo

4.2 is great in theory, but I'm not sure how it's panning out. I think senior open 5 has more potential for success because it's more accessible.

If senior 2 allowed for a slight increase in the difficulty of stunts, then I think the necessity for 4.2 would be gone. It's the feeling of being stuck doing 'easy' stunts because your tumbling is lacking that brought about the issue in the first place. Let's face it- for a good chunk of people, stunting is MUCH easier to learn/improve than tumbling in a short span of time. HOW many threads here are on mental tumbling blocks?? Notice how there are VERY few on stunting mental blocks..

 

[King]

#2 Get rid of Senior Level 4.2! See #4 below for reasons.

agreed



I definitely think the practicality of ages and levels should be taken into account and some divisions gotten rid of. 4.2, Mini 3, and Senior 1 should be gone.

agreed i dislike these divisions and think they should be gone because they dont make a ton of sense imo

4.2 is great in theory, but I'm not sure how it's panning out. I think senior open 5 has more potential for success because it's more accessible.

If senior 2 allowed for a slight increase in the difficulty of stunts, then I think the necessity for 4.2 would be gone. It's the feeling of being stuck doing 'easy' stunts because your tumbling is lacking that brought about the issue in the first place. Let's face it- for a good chunk of people, stunting is MUCH easier to learn/improve than tumbling in a short span of time. HOW many threads here are on mental tumbling blocks?? Notice how there are VERY few on stunting mental blocks..

Interesting idea on stunting vs tumbling mental blocks. but i think you are comparing apples and oranges. if you cant stay in the air you fall at comps (which a lot of people do) or you come out of the air.

in theory the 4.2 idea doesnt make sense to me, but sounds great when it was being pitched. to think that a team has the body control and technique to do double downs, kick fulls, full ups, and flipping pyramids but nothing more than a standing handspring is hard for me to fathom. and while the initial pitch to the usasf probably made sense (" we have this division for all the high schoolers and kids who didnt grow up learning tumbling but can stunt really well. this way they wont be stuck in senior 2. it will be great!" ) it has ended up putting itty bitty things on larger senior girls and having them throw the girls around like rag dolls.

 

[Mom Jeans]

1. Small gym divisions make sense, but only some of the comp companies use them, so small gyms are still competing against the large gyms. I haven't seen it used once at the comps we've been to this year. Not only have I seen small gym competing against large gym, many times it ends up small gym, small team (20 or less) competing against large gym, large team. Now that's tough.

2. 4.2 might go away on it's own if it was called 2.4, which makes more sense to me anyway. Comp companies schedule 4.2 after or everyother one with Sr 4. So right in the middle of watching layouts you're watching backhandsprings, not a big deal it's just a strange as a spectator.

 

[cheer4life88]

I have a few...

#2 Get rid of Senior Level 4.2! See #4 below for reasons.

Personally, I love the 4.2 division. It is a really great option for small gyms! This year our Senior team is 99% high school athletes who have never cheered before (3 of our Senior team members returned from last year, the rest graduated). That is what this division is for, high school athletes who are now cheering competitively.

Let's face it, a majority of high school teams don't have crazy tumbling. In our area, there are always 3 or 4 girls that can tumble on a high school team. And one of those girls has a tuck. The others typically have back handsprings. On the other hand, high school cheerleaders are typically good stunters!

I will use my team as an example. We had two options this year: go level 3 where the stunting will be dumbing it down and tumbling would not be the greatest (7 girls have handspring tucks) or we could go level 4.2 where our tumbling would be strong and the girls would get to do advanced stunting skills. We chose level 4.2 because that is where they would be best.

In my opinion, I fear that if you take this division away, teams that have a majority of high school athletes will begin to struggle. I know before level 4.2, our teams struggled because our Senior team members come from high schools and the tumbling always suffered.

I think if you are a part of a large gym, level 4.2 doesn't make much sense because you do have girls that try out to be on teams and you have so many options. With a small gym (where we only get 50-60 girls sign up for ALL TEAMS), you have to work with what you have. And like I said before this new level has really been a blessing!

 

[ohkcheery]

Okay, I finally have time to check this out:
1. Love the idea. DI vs. DII. Needs requirements or restrictions. And I know I saw you say DI/DII is based on scholarships.. but that's the minor part of deciding what is DI/DII. Schools need to be able to field a certain number of mens and womens teams to be able to be considered DI or DII (I believe its a minimum of 16 teams in DI and only 10 in DII) which all relates to the number of athletes, which in turn is why larger schools are USUALLY DI and smaller schools are usually DII. The requirements would be necessary to keep people from all joining the same division.
2. I'm all for it.
4. I LOVE THIS IDEA. I hate seeing on websites "home of the 7642398746129873 time national champions!" uhh.. not if it only included teams from your state or region, you aren't. This would be splendid.
5. Against combining divisions at worlds - smalls and larges because there aren't enough? Uhh no thanks. Get rid of the International divisions and then we can talk. Let everyone go all out for it. If the best three teams are US teams, so be it.
6. Love this idea. BUT there would need to be some way to levelize the scores if a small team were to compete against a large, for example.
8. Leave Worlds alone. Unless other West Coast states start popping out cheerleaders (nothing against that side of the country, I love it) it should stay over here. Half of the entire population of the US is on the East Coast.. and that's not including "Mid-West" states which could go either way. It's better/more cost effective/environmentally friendly to have 10 teams fly from Cali to FL each year than to have 70+ fly from NY/MD/PA/MA/FL/GA etc to Cali..

Now I need to go read through all the other pages and see what else was said!

 

[kristenthegreat]

#2 Get rid of Senior Level 4.2! See #4 below for reasons.

agreed



I definitely think the practicality of ages and levels should be taken into account and some divisions gotten rid of. 4.2, Mini 3, and Senior 1 should be gone.

agreed i dislike these divisions and think they should be gone because they dont make a ton of sense imo

4.2 is great in theory, but I'm not sure how it's panning out. I think senior open 5 has more potential for success because it's more accessible.

If senior 2 allowed for a slight increase in the difficulty of stunts, then I think the necessity for 4.2 would be gone. It's the feeling of being stuck doing 'easy' stunts because your tumbling is lacking that brought about the issue in the first place. Let's face it- for a good chunk of people, stunting is MUCH easier to learn/improve than tumbling in a short span of time. HOW many threads here are on mental tumbling blocks?? Notice how there are VERY few on stunting mental blocks..

Interesting idea on stunting vs tumbling mental blocks. but i think you are comparing apples and oranges. if you cant stay in the air you fall at comps (which a lot of people do) or you come out of the air.

in theory the 4.2 idea doesnt make sense to me, but sounds great when it was being pitched. to think that a team has the body control and technique to do double downs, kick fulls, full ups, and flipping pyramids but nothing more than a standing handspring is hard for me to fathom. and while the initial pitch to the usasf probably made sense (" we have this division for all the high schoolers and kids who didnt grow up learning tumbling but can stunt really well. this way they wont be stuck in senior 2. it will be great!" ) it has ended up putting itty bitty things on larger senior girls and having them throw the girls around like rag dolls.

Good point. It also sort of ties in to the idea on why in my mind 4.2 was good in theory- it's easier to work around something like stunting mental blocks (as terrible as I would be as a flier, it'd be much easier to teach me that than try to get me to do a bhs!), than it is to push tumbling (There's a reason why only so few girls become elite gymnasts. Unless you're training that one skill aspect with dedication, it's hard to get comfortable doing it). I can think of several girls at my old gym who are BEAST stunters but will probably NEVER have more than a bhs, especially now that they're getting older. I hope I'm being clear? Maybe I am and you just disagree anyway. :)

My old gym, for the record, is thinking about using/switching one of the teams who has been doing well in Senior 2 to 4.2. It's one of that 2 senior teams that they're trying to boost up in terms of ability stunt-wise while waiting for some of the tumblers to catch up. They also have a senior 3 team that will hopefully be moving to senior 4.

As for the small gym thing- I came from a small gym. And one general sentiment that I gathered (but was never spoken) was that they didn't WANT to be treated like a small gym. They didn't want a special division or special concessions made- they wanted to win against whatever gym on their own merit. They might have been intimidated by bigger gyms or ones who had been around longer, but they still didn't want to cop out and not try. Just because we had fewer participants didn't mean we didn't want to have awesome choreography and music, and work bigger and better skills.

 

[BlueCat]

Agree on most of what your saying, but also disagree on a couple.

1. Small gym divisions were developed for a reason. Gyms with very few athletes cannot compete with larger gyms. The all star world is much different than when Cheer Athletics/Top Gun first started and there were few gyms. Now that we have less divisions, most teams always have competition. Only people that usually complain about this is large gyms and they control the industry for the most part. Look at the USASF board next time and see who is on it. Mainly large gym people.

2. Standarized score sheets are not the issue, its people judging. Teams are still not getting placed correctly because judges are not using their grids correctly.

3. I like the fact that we have choices in where we compete and don't have specific events we have to go to. Yes on side there are to many nationals, but on the other we get the freedom as coaches to take our kids to any event and not deal with company issues. Everyone knows NCA,Cheersport and Worlds are the end all be all of cheer.

4. I think the USASF needs to offer more training like USAG does in gymnastics. They have conventions called Congress and they are GREAT. So much education offered and kicks cheer out of the water. If all coaches went, then cheer would be much safer and you would see more gyms with standards in teaching.

1. I wasn't getting rid of the concept of shielding less experienced gyms from those with more resources at their disposal. I suggested two self-selected divisions that would function essentially the same way, but not tied exclusively to total enrollment.

How competitive and experienced a gym is is NOT solely determined by how many total people they have on teams. There are some "small" gyms that could kick nearly any "large" gym's boo-tay. Not every gym with with 74 athletes has to be (or wants to be) shielded from the big bad evil "large" gyms. For that matter, not every 200+ gym knows how to put even a decent routine together. If you don't want to compete against the Top Guns and Stingrays of the world, then you can select "division 2" at the beginning of the year and you will often (depending on the size of the event) be protected from competing against them. You just don't get the option of changing your mind about it every week depending on who shows up at that competition.

2. If there was only a single system, it would be easier to train judges on it. Having multiple grids for judges to learn certainly doesn't help judge competence. Event producers could pool their resources and come up with a single judge training program that was collectively better than anything a single event producer would have the time, energy, or money to produce.

I, too, am frustrated at times by what I assume to be faulty judging. However, since we never get to see how any other teams are actually being judged, it is difficult to even know if the judges are competent or not. You could be consistently losing for the same reason, never know it, and assume that the judges simply didn't know what they were doing.

3. I wasn't suggesting that we have only 3 event producers. I was simply responding to two problems that we have. 1. Too few teams in divisions at the majority of regionals. 2. Increasing cost of events. If there are fewer total events with more teams in attendance at each, the both of those issues are helped. Parents wouldn't have to attend "recitals" every week instead of competitions. Event producers could dramatically reduce the per capita cost of their events - potentially passing along those savings in reduced entry/gate fees. I even said, though, that I don't know how to make this happen. (Neither do the event producers that I have talked to, although they ALL would like to see it happen.)

4. I agree that there are some things that USAG does better than USASF at this point. They have had several decades more time to develop their education and training programs. Overall, I wouldn't switch USASF for a USAG-style bureaucracy, but I agree there are certainly some things that we could learn from them.

re-reading this: It comes across as being more defensive than I felt when I wrote it. All are legitimate concerns with the ideas - I never suggested that all of these were absolute locks to be the perfect ideas.

 

[BlueCat]

I think that self-selection of D1 and D2 would work better than most people think. I think that the larger gyms would feel a significant pressure to select D1 to keep their athletes. If there would need to be some restrictions, though, I suppose that would work. If you said that 175+ HAD to be D1, I could go with something like that.

 

[BlueCat]

"Look at the USASF board next time and see who is on it. Mainly large gym people."

USASF Board of Directors:

Jim Chadwick - Chairman / USASF
Aaron Flaker - Jam Brands
Catherine Morris - UDA
Elaine Pascale - NACCC
Jeff Fowlkes - CHEERSPORT
Jody Melton - Cheer Athletics
John Newby - UCA
Karen Halterman - NCA
Lance Wagers - ACA
Mike Burgess - USA
Mac Hirshberg - Mac's All-Stars
Happy Hooper - ACE Cheer Company
Steve Peterson - USASF

I don't feel that large gyms "dominate" the USASF Board. I'm not sure how big Mac's All-Stars are, (they don't fall into the set of "large" gyms that most people think of), but we'll count him for arguments sake. Elaine is technically there representing NACCC, but you could count her, I suppose. Some of Happy's gyms would be considered small (or at least would have pretty recently), but overall, he has a very large program, so he counts. CA is pretty much a "large gym" no matter how you look at. At MOST, you are looking at 4 out of 13.

If any group is over-represented, it is the event producers.

 

[cheeritup]

i know this is totally random - but what if the sport was so standardized that it was measured like ice skating. The first day - every team in the division has to do the same routine - music can change - but the routine is standard - that way the creativity etc is all the same but you truly have to have the skills to be in that division and it's black and white on the scoring - the stunt sequence and pyramid are the exact same, the tumbling requirements would be set as they are - like for level 4 - need to have standing back tucks, jump hspr tuck, and running through to layouts (% of people doing the skills gets you the points). Dance and cheer - all should be the same.
And then on the second day of the competition - the routine can be your own within the guidelines - that would be more work i know - but would be fun - and i think kind of cool - that way you standardize completely the first day for placements.

 

[allgoodpeople]

Editorial Note:

Great discussion. Carry on.

 

[BlueCat]

Editorial Note:

Great discussion. Carry on.

It is a bit different from the "who has the cutest hair bows" type thread. A little variety is always nice.

 

[FLcoach]

I think the idea of DI and DII would replace the need for small gym/ large gym divisions- And I think this is a great idea. It shouldn't necessarily be based off of enrollment, but other factors as well.

In 4.2 you still have to have handsprings- typically I have been seeing 4.2 teams with few handsprings and not level 4 stunting skills at all. I think we need to get rid of 4.2 and create one division that is a non tumbling division. As in, instead of 4.2 create a 3NT as in level 3 stunting and no tumbling. There would still be level 1,2,3,4,5 but instead of 4.2 create an additional level of 3NT.

I can already hear the argument- cheerleading is tumbling, you can't get rid of tumbling, etc. BUT it would attract SO MANY older new kids into cheerleading. Guaranteed- if gyms could offer a team where kids without tumbling could come in and learn stunts, choreography, and everything cheer- these kids would be hooked! And then eventually would want to learn to tumble or would at least get to enjoy cheerleading until they age out.

In a perfect world would this division be necessary? No. In a perfect world all of our gyms would be full of tiny1, mini1, youth1, and we could build those kids into our future level 2,3,4's and 5's. The reality is- in many areas- a senior aged team that did not have a tumbling requirement would be a huge way to get kids in the door. Get rid of 4.2 and just replace it with a nontumble division