Cp is starting her 3rd year with a 43 year old football and cheer program in Central Western NJ. The year that we joined was our organization's inaugural year in a newly formed AYC league (almost everyone moved over from Pop Warner) which has proven to be extremely competitive. I think the league that we compete in earned 15 of 23? National AYC Titles this year...and to get there we have to compete against each other two times to qualify for Nationals so it can get pretty intense.
This will be my second year assistant coaching CP's team and this year we move to the Mighty Mite (Division 8) level. This "may" be our first year competing on the Nationals track at the Mighty Mite level- but that is still to be decided. AYF just opened Division8 to competition last year, but we chose to exhibit instead. Now this year, the talent and drive of the team is enticing some of us to "go for it" (not to mention seeing both the older teams earning bids to Nationals last year)--but ...adding another competition team into the mix, especially at this age, might not be the best thing. I am curious to see how it all plays out in the next few weeks as decisions are being made. (especially since the possibility of our season extending to mid Dec if we make it to Nationals, will effect my daughter cheering for her AS team. We would probably have to go with prep instead of moving to teh full year team).
By the looks of early registrations, it looks like we will have a Mini, Flag, Mighty Mite, Jpw, PeeWee, Junior Midget squads, plus our awesome Contender (Special Needs) program.-- so we will provide cheer for ages 3-15. We age the teams out after 8th grade graduation, so that we don't compete with the high schools.
We don't hold tryouts and accept everyone. Placement is usually done by birthdate.
Last year was a great year for the program. Our oldest team came in 3rd in the Nation (5th overall in the entire comp) and our other competitive team were named Champs. Our Contender team was also invited to perform at Nationals.
We practice at the field 4 or 5 nights a week during August and then the teams all scatter to different indoor practice sites for the fall where they practice 3 times a week. (This is the only thing that I don't like about the program- a lack of our own gym, makes it very hard on parents who have 2 or more girls on different teams practicing in two different places).
We are required to cheer every Sunday at a game and usually have to travel over an hour to get to most of our opponents, since we are the most northern team in the league.
We compete at 2-3 local comps for "fun".
And then we have two big AYC comps that we need to place high to earn bids to Nationals.
Imo, the commitment is more intense than All Stars - it can get pretty cray cray at times :)
edited to add- AYC just joined up with EPIC this year, so they are hosting some camps for teh league and the team this year--I am definitely enjoying the affiliation!
