- Dec 4, 2009
- 14,108
- 19,303
- Moderator
- #61
Thank You King.
What... no shimmy?
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Thank You King.
What... no shimmy?
I agree with some of your statements, not all of them. I have so much respect for the fact that you actually have a structured opinion. Most don't. So you got a SHIMMY ;)I do think paid bids should only go to club level teams. The whole industry is built on the back of club level teams, so club level teams should be rewarded. If international disappeared tomorrow there will be little consequence, but if club were to disappear so would all of allstar cheer. I say this as a coach of an international 6 team. Paid bids are there for club level teams.
As for LESS teams going to worlds (aka making the event more prestigious) I think it is a double edged sword. What makes worlds so amazing is the ridiculous amount of teams there. After 90% of those teams are done (the ones just happy to be competing there) they turn around and sit in the stands and become the most crazed fervent fans you can imagine. They fill the air with a sense of importance and excitement that can't be described. If we lower the teams we lose that. BUT with so many teams it is harder to be accurately judged.
I don't think there should be 'international' divisions. It is either club or open. Open is 18+ and allows college level kids. Club is 12-18 and no kids who can cheer in college are allowed. You are either a club athlete or an open level athlete, age wise there would be a cutoff where you switch from one to the other.
There should not be just top 3 from a country. That doesn't make sense. If you want the sport to grow, dont restrict talent. If a country wants to send one representative to a division that only has one US team... well isn't that what the ICU is for?
Last, IOC 5 should have normal balanced scoresheets that look like either large all girl or unlimited coed depending. IOC 6 can have the over emphasis on building skills because amazing building is highlighted in 6.
My feeling is that the "international" age group is experiencing far and away the most growth of any age bracket in our sport. I think that eliminating it would damage a lot of gyms financially. Maybe "open" teams in the past have been loss-leaders at best for many gyms, but that is no longer the case. Many gyms, our included, depend on those teams to help support the business. There are many divisions that could be eliminated without damaging the overall financial picture - the "international" divisions are not one of them. Getting rid of the "international" divisions make little sense to me at this point.
As far as event producers being prohibited from granting paid bids to the "international" age group, I don't think that would be fair either. Those athletes have arguably "paid their dues" more than any other athletes in our sport. They potentially have been paying entry fees to those event producers for over a decade. Saying that they deserve those bids less than a different age bracket simply because they don't fit into some gyms' business model is a little crazy.
Also, they pay just as much for their entry fees as a "senior" team does. They also often have the least amount of available funds to get to Worlds any other way.
Using Fire as an example, everyone on that team has aged out. There are NO high school age kids on the team. This, IMO, is the way it should be. Some programs, I am speculating here, may not have enough kids for a pure L5 and create a IOL5. May be they have to much and have to make another team to keep the extra L5 kids happy. Either way, as an old school parent I am not a fan of it. TOO many divisions.
Also, I know some competitions give a reduced rate on entry fees to L6 teams. I don't know about the IOL5 teams but I would be willing to bet it happens.
As far as event producers being prohibited from granting paid bids to the "international" age group, I don't think that would be fair either. Those athletes have arguably "paid their dues" more than any other athletes in our sport. They potentially have been paying entry fees to those event producers for over a decade. Saying that they deserve those bids less than a different age bracket simply because they don't fit into some gyms' business model is a little crazy.
exactly
If a company wants to give an international team a paid bid knowing the probability of that team actually making it to finals, then let them. At any rate, if the international team got a bid with money, didn't make finals, and the money was basically wasted, that team still earned that chance. If you want to take away money from the international teams, you might as well kill the division altogether because it will certainly die, most of these young athletes can't afford worlds on top of gym and competition fees for the year.
I was not suggesting that IO 5 teams are "owed" anything. However, if one suggests that they should be restricted from getting paid bids because they aren't currently making some gyms money, then I am just pointing out that those athletes have, in most cases, done their fair share of contributing to the financial state of the sport over their careers.
I would also agree that generally the L1-3 support the industry a great deal more than L4-6. However, if we are talking about L5-6 specifically, then IO5 and IOC5 are among the largest "elite" divisions. Here are the numbers of teams from NCA 2010 in the "true" L5-6 divisions:
International Open - 8
International Open Coed - 8
Large Junior - 3
Large Junior Coed - 2
Large Senior - 5
Large Limited - 7
Senior Semi-Limited - 2
Senior Unlimited - 5
Small Junior - 5
Small Junior C0ed - 6
Small Senior - 22
Small Limited Coed - 19
Youth - 4
Open 6 - 2
Open Coed 6 - 2
Those numbers don't suggest that IO5 and IOC5 represent a tiny segment of the elite team market that should be eliminated. In fact, you could make a case for eliminating many other divisions before you got anywhere near International 5.
For reference, here are the senior open numbers, which I did not include above:
Large Senior Open - 6
Small Senior Open - 9
Small Senior Open Coed - 7
The reason behind the number of teams participating in IOC 5 is because divisions available to 17+ is limited to 4. The divisions available to those in the 12-18 age range are 12. (including juniors AND open 5).
So, get rid of unlimited and medium (combine), make large 30 (like we have suggested) and youll see comparable numbers.
Put another way if you give 100 people 100 choices of ice cream then I would imagine chocolate or vanilla would be the most popular with 15 or so people choosing it. But if you give 100 people only a choice of chocolate or vanilla than at least one of those choices is gonna have 50 or more. It is all about the choices available.
Yes, ice cream shops could only sell two flavors and that would probably increase their sales of those particular 2 flavors. However, their overall sales would likely go down. Maybe someone would buy chocolate instead of their favorite Rocky Road. However, some may just decide to go next door to the soda shop if they can't get the flavor they want. The goal should be to get the most total people buying ice cream.
If the ice cream shop wanted to reduce the number of flavors, they wouldn't start by eliminating the current #3 and #4 most popular ones, they would start with the ones that hardly anyone buys already. They certainly wouldn't try to force all of their customers that USED to buy the #3 and #4 flavors into buying the 2 least popular ones.