I think something along these lines is a good idea, but maybe it could be, like, 6.2. I love watching the insane stunting!!
General International question - I wonder if anyone can answer why tumbling in this division, from many countries outside North America, is lower-level. With gymnastics being relatively popular, there are lots of facilities available for practice, so why isn't it emphasized the way stunting seems to be?
I like the 6.2 or 6.(something) idea.
Let me try and answer your second point from my experience and point of view, be warned I may ramble:
Cheerleading in my country is relatively new and not widely known or publicised. The majority of our team didn't discover the sport until university (so ages 18 and above) and come from all different backgrounds - gymnastics, circus, trampolining, dance (teaching ballerinas to fly with their feet straight is pretty funny, I know because I was one of them!). Gymnastics is relatively popular with younger kids, but there are few cheer gyms or even wide knowledge that cheerleading even exists for them to consider trying it out. We have very few actual cheer gyms, most of them are in the outer suburbs and hard to get to. Last year, our team trained at a cramped gymnastics gym once a week and then in a weird, damp, leaky warehouse with some dead mats. Over summer we trained in the park. This year we're at a nice gym facility, but it still doesn't have a full cheer floor. In fact, I doubt there are more than 10 training facilities in the whole country that have a full cheer floor. Our population is about a tenth of the US'.
There aren't many cheer coaches around, and even fewer cheer tumble coaches. I only started cheering last year, but some on my team have been doing it for four or five years. None of them have bhs. Okay, so some of them are a bit uncoordinated, but the main reason (the way I see it) is they had a gymnastics coach during that time. She was very strict about gymnastics-based progressions and wouldn't let you do anything until you could hold a handstand for at least 20s. After four years some still didn't have a cartwheel. Handstands have nothing to do with tucks or bhs, people weren't motivated to try because they weren't getting anywhere. Perhaps she was just a bad adult coach, she was (and still is) very successful with kids. But really, a 20 year old is not going to learn how to throw a full if they have no prior experience. Especially considering we know we're only going to be in the sport for a few years. If it were kids, then yeah, I'd be pushing them to tumble, but it's so much harder for adults to learn. And a lot of us have jobs that require us to be physically able to work - like in bars, restaurants, cafes, so if we get injured we're out of a means of living as well as the sport. When I was injured during tumbling training a few months ago (freak accident), I couldn't wash my hair let alone work. Thankfully I live with my partner who washed my hair for me and paid our rent, but if I was on my own I would have been stuffed. I'm not going to force anyone to do skills they have a reasonable fear of, because I'm not the one who pays their rent and puts food in their mouth.
In the past, my team had a new cheer coach every few years, one year they didn't even have one, and a lot of the time they were learning off youtube. Last year when I started I was just chucked up in the air and told to lock and squeeze. When it came to learning how to fulldown, I got told to lock, squeeze and just turn, literally. Every year we have new people joining the team with no cheer experience but can tumble, or have danced, so they have some potential. Because we're not a cheer gym, just a stand-alone team, we try and take on as many new people with good potential and train them up to our level. It's great to have new people interested in the sport, but it's also hard because those with experience can't advance until everyone is roughly up to speed with stunting. This year we have awesome, experienced coaches and they're making a world of difference.
I suppose in the end, we all love the sport. We're good at stunting, subpar at tumbling (most of us, we have a few good ones) but that's not going to stop us from participating and competing. Tumbling is not our biggest priority. I know it should be, and I know all the arguments for it, but if we can have fun and are safe and good at building level 6 pyramids, then why hold us back because we can't do a bhs? We're like Bangkok, the crowd loved them at worlds but they had subpar tumbling (and I don't think they should have won, but that's another thread). This is pretty much the same story for every other adult team we compete against.
In my opinion, providing a place for young adults to hang out, be active and work towards a common goal and socialise in a place that doesn't involve alcohol or sex (and isn't church) is a good thing. I love it, they love it, and we do amazing things together. It's going to take a long time for the rest of the world to build cheer gyms and have the right people coaching and getting kids involved. It will happen, it's just taking time. Right now, participation in cheerleading in my country is about 50/50 over/under 18. Until more kids start picking it up, and they won't until there are the facilities for them to start, we're going to be bad tumblers. Trust me, it's not from lack of trying!
So when internationals come to worlds, we know that we're not going to have the tumbling skills, WE KNOWWW, so continually hearing about how we're not good enough all round cheerleaders is a bit tiring. We come to appreciate allstar cheer for what it is supposed to be, and maybe take a little bit of that sparkle home with us to spread around our small community of cheerleaders and get a little better every year.
