I haven't even read through all the other answers because this just makes me so upset. I know a lot of americans want to win everything and will go to great lengths to do so, but don't assume everyone has got that as their main goal.
Viqueens is an amazing gym, and they WANT to compete io6. However, like GCO wildcats (back to back bronze champions), they have too many girls that are too young to be on io6 for worlds this year. The norweigan age grid is different, allowing them to still be in all girl premiere in norway. They're also not allowed to be team norway at icu solely because they want to compete at iasf worlds.
Both the age grid, divisions and competitions are VERY different over here, even between norway and sweden. They only have senior all girl elite and premiere, aka level 5 and 6. They still have every intention to stay io6 in the future, hence why they're still competing all girl premiere at home.
They also won their bid last year (in march), when they won nationals. Over here, there are only one national competition and one national champion. One chance for a bid. We are getting more and more open competitions pop up, but they don't give out bids to worlds. It's not like they switch back and forth between io6 and nt5, because there is no such thing as nt5 here, nor can you switch back and forth to earn bids at random competitions.
As you said, they can't tumble in nt5 so that's not an issue. Though they're already at a heavy disadvantage as far as tumling goes, as there are no spring floor over here.. And yes they can stunt level 6, but that's a completely different ballgame to level 5. I would much rather base a flipping toss than a kick double, all the grips are different to make certain skills legal, most stunts they're used to they can't even do (free flipping mounts and dismounts, 2.5 high pyramids). It's probably harder for viqueens to try and sort a nt5 routine out in the middle of the season, than it is for all the american teams that can perfect their nt5 routines all season.
Also, why the heck should they not be allowed in that division? There's always so much smack about only the top 3 moving on from each country in international, now you don't even want other countries to enter the new divisions because the division doesn't exist in their country? A LOT of american team switched divisions, both before and through out the season, to the division they felt they had the best opportunity, this is no different, other than the fact they're not even allowed in io6..
If this was an american team with only 3 running fulls and the rest tucks, y'all would be screaming for them to either drop to level 4 or go non-tumbling. But now it's an international team, they're just doing it for the "easy win"..
And YES they've known the whole season those athletes were too young, and yes they've planned to compete level 5 all season because of that. But since they have other competitions which are probably equally as important to them as worlds (nationals and europeans for example), where those athletes are allowed to compete level 6, why the heck should they not include them for the season if they're part of the best athletes to try out? Solely for worlds? Yeah no, that's not a thing!
I'm sorry but all this talking is making me legit angry.
Don't bash what you don't know.
Let me make one thing clear : Never, ever, was it about USA vs The World or even America vs The World, never been about a country or a continent, I would've questioned the move if it were a US or Canadian based team, with all due respect, maybe if you would've read the whole thread, you would know better where I'm coming from.
The questioning was mostly about the rules, or the « unwritten rule » about how down can you switch down.
Let's go at it another way, let's say we have 9 categories per level.
Level 6 Large A-B-C, Level 6 Medium A-B-C, Level 6 Small A-B-C
Level 5 Large A-B-C, Level 5 Medium A-B-C, Level 5 Small A-B-C, and of course, Level 5 NT
Now if you start the year at Level 6 Large A and lose some girls in the process, you'd logically switch down to Level 6 Medium, then Small and that's about how low you could go. Same goes for Level 5 A to 5 NT.
If it's an age thing, so you don't lose any athletes but they are unable to compete, yet are still on the team, then you have the same number of athletes but by their age, they can compete at Level 6, you'd logically go from Level 6 Large A to Level 5 Large A.
Just to make sure, those are examples, since almost everybody got what the subject was all about, I'm going to the simpliest of examples, I know there are Co-Ed teams or XS teams, and Senior is different than Intl and so on and so forth.
So, if by my estimate, and anybody who followed the season knows it, we can't hide our heads in the sand here, the new Level 5 NT All Girl division will, at least for this year, be the weakest at Worlds...kind of the entry level if you will.
There's lots of reasons for this, the most important one being that gyms didn't know what to expect of the competition so almost every one built their 5 NT team differently. To big gyms had enough athletes to put together a strong team with lots of Worlds experience, all the way to small gyms who didn't have enough tumblers and saw an opportunity to try their chance at Worlds and anything in between from medium gyms to others giving a final chance to athletes that were going to leave because of age and/or injuries and/or lack of tumbling skills etc etc...
Again, solely based on my humble opinion, there was maybe 4 or 5 good to great teams that competed against each other this year in US and Canada and I was looking forward to see them battle it out for the gold at Worlds.
Then, when I read Viqueens athletes and supporters on social media saying they were gonna dominate Worlds this year, get revenge for their 2nd place last year (They won silver last year in IO Level 6 AG Large) by switching down to Level 5 NT, it bugged me and got me questioning the rules of cheerleading in general.
Of course I went to check them out and saw a video of them doing an L6 routine a week ago (Albeit not their best one but nonetheless, I could see they had skills...) Of course I didn't know about all the rules and regulations as it pertained to European teams.
So, by that logic, the questions I asked here were : Is there a time frame in which you can switch or can not switch anymore ?
And : How low can you go to win Worlds ? Isn't there a rule that prevents a L6 A (Or B) team to switch down all the way to L5 NT (Who might be C-) team ? If there is no rules, is it ethical to do it ? If not, what would be an acceptable gap ?
Or like I said, maybe the reality of cheerleading makes it right and everything's ok and may the best team win !
Again, sorry if you took it for bashing and by the way, I think you're right when you say we shouldn't bash something we don't know, and maybe my way of bringing up the subject seemed a bit arrogant, but in the end, it was only a matter of questioning, which is what anybody should do when he or she doesn't know everything on a subject, don't you think ?
That said, good luck to every team in the All Girl 5 NT division, Viqueens will have a chane to WoW everybody from the get go since they will be the 1st ever team in history to perform at Worlds in the category, they drew #1 at yersterday's lottery!
