Normally, I would address issues with the event producer directly. On that note, I have expressed the desire to discuss my concerns in private with Varsity on multiple occasions. Once I was told they were getting a group of various gym owners and flying them to Memphis to discuss. (In fairness, that may have happened, but I wasn't a part of that.) During the event itself, I asked a higher-up when would be the best time to express my numerous concerns and was told that I should "bring it up at Varsity U". I'm sorry, but out of principle, I'm not paying to attend a Varsity infomercial just to express my concerns about Summit.
This is mostly from memory, but my issues with Summit fall into 2 main categories. The main one, by far, is the various negative effects the event has/has had on the health/future of our industry. That is a full-length manifesto by itself (perhaps for another day). The other is the actual event itself. Here is a brief list of the areas I thought fell short this year:
Venue Design.
We were sold the idea of the new building as the end-all-be-all building for cheer. It clearly was set up with the idea that you could run 4 simultaneous floors at once. There are multiple (foreseeable) reasons that just isn't happening. The architect needs to be sued.
- Audio design is poor. The bleed from each floor was huge. It looks like minimal, if any, effort was put into containing sound from one floor to another. This meant music had to be kept at MUCH lower volume than any other event we attended. Athletes were missing cues because of this.
- Crowd/bleachers was awkwardly close to floors.
- Judges area at an unusual angle to view routines and unusually close.
- Whoever pushes play unable to get in front of team.
- Incredibly crowded backstage area - unsafe and nowhere to have a quiet moment with team (prayers, etc) prior to performances
- Temperature control in warmup room way off.
- Internal signage was confusing (which floor was which?)
- Pedestrian traffic flow was dangerously mismanaged. Arena entrance/exit traffic funneled through 1 woefully undersized area shared with the park entrance. I don't see an easy way to fix this massive design flaw.
- The fire department (understandably) shut the event down while athletes stood in the heat for a LONG time unable to move. No one was willing to leave for fear they couldn't get back in, but no one could get in until people left. There was little to no communication about the resulting time delays, etc.
How they didn't foresee these issues is beyond me. Disney is normally fantastic at moving herds of people around. Surely they have software to model those things when building multi-million dollar arenas? They were running 3 floors and having major traffic issues - 4 seemed like an impossibility. If you couldn't run 4, why design the arena the way you did?
Event Logistics
- Scoresheet distribution was inconsistent
- Scoring not available online in timely manner
- New schedule not updated in timely manner
- No hospitality for coaches
- Staff didn't know answers to basic questions
- Event ended far too late in evening
- Multiple errors in results/announcements
- Legality and USASF booth undermanned, too far away from event
- Some divisions too large to be judged effectively
- Ran out of individual awards/prizes LONG before event was even close to being over
The marketing on Summit has been brilliant. They have convinced parents that Summit is incredibly exclusive, while simultaneously having the largest number of teams of any event in cheer. They need to spend some of that talent/energy on the event itself.
NCA and other events are truly fantastic experiences nearly every single year. Varsity can run some amazing, world-class events. 2018 D1 Summit was not one of them.