I'm not saying people won't steal material, because I know they will, but if they like it when they see it and the team doing it originally places well someone who is inclined to do that will likely do it regardless of weather or not they see the actual score. On the other hand, I am confident enough in my coaching ability, and the abilities of every other coach in my gym (and yours for that matter haha) that even if someone steals our stunt/pyramid transition when they see it at a competition they will never be able to do it as well as us simply because we have already been working on it for 6-8 months.
On the big gym wins because of their name topic... I find the whole implication to be pretty insulting quite frankly. As it has been said millions of times on this and various other cheerleading forums the big gym didn't start as a big gym, they got big through hard work and SUPERIOR COACHING! It's easy to make excuses for a loss, especially when your head has been filled with propaganda about the evil big gym, or (as a coach or owner) you are scared of losing your athletes to the gym that beat you. It's much easier to project a short coming onto the judges or politics in general, rather than taking a real honest look at your team and figuring out what your team could have done differently to change the outcome. The only thing you have any control over is your behavior, your abilities, and your preparation, if you honestly believe that if it's neck and neck the coin flip will go to the big gym (which I don't I actually think it goes the other way because we all love the underdog and hate the yankees) then it's your responsibility to remove all doubt and make your team unquestionably better! For some reason everyone will agree that Bill Belichick, Mike Krzyzewski, Pat Summit or whoever else are such great coaches that they can create winners out of any team, myself included, but when a cheerleading team loses the fact that they got out coached never crosses anyone's mind! Judges are biased, the big gyms get an advantage, or those kids are just better "anyone could win with those kids" is all you ever hear! It gets really old! I don't mean that to be insulting to any coaches but everyone always thinks they are already such a great coach that they have nothing to learn, if only they were part of this secret club where you get all the breaks. That's not it... Read a book by one of the legendary coaches (I would recommend John Wooden), talk to coaches from historically successful cheer programs, I find that most coaches are really open and honest about the way their program works, and ultimately WORK HARDER, if you want to beat my team you are going to have to out work us, at least that's the way I see it, and that's hard to do. Sorry for the rant, this is just a touchy subject for me..
As a former all star coach at a tiny gym, you have no idea what it's like to be on the other end of the all star spectrum.
If you somehow think that reputation doesn't play a role in outcomes you have no understanding of the way we as humans operate. I know for 100% fact that USA Gymnastics judges are often swayed by gym name, it has nothing to do with an outright attempt to "screw over" a group of 10 year olds, it has a lot more to do with internally a judge knowing that gym X is always strong, and the coaches are well known and respected and gym Y no one has heard of. That's in gymnastics, where the judging is completely TRANSPARENT.
I'm not going to say that cheer judges set out to unfairly judge a competition (even though at current, a judge or group of judges could throw every division they see without consequence) but the same mindset comes into play. When judging a big name, you're not going to be looking as closely at things like form or jumps because they're from gym X, and gym X is always solid, now I believe that 8 out of 10 times those judges will still watch for those things but not with the same fervor they would watch a relative unknown. When you judge someone you don't know there's a much greater chance to be under the microscope, you have to be perfect to even think about competing.
Which brings me to my next point, you said, among several other insulting things, that big gyms got big because of superior coaching... This leads me to believe you've never been a part of a gym in a town of less that 6,000 people... not children... people. The only way to build a big gym is to win. We both understand that, the only way to win is to be better than your opponent and hope that if they are more respected than you they drop everything and have a few busts too. When that happens, when you have a perfect routine under that microscope thats when a small gym can start to gain a reputation. So not you've got a reputation and you've beaten a rival gym, and now that gym finally considers you a rival, you have to stock your gym with talent so that growth can continue. But here's the new problem, you're located over an hour away from anything that is even close to being considered a city, who are you going to get to come to your gym? The answer, as difficult as it often is for the coaches to swallow, is whoever walks through the door. So when someone says "well anyone could win with those kids" what they may mean is "anyone could win with the talent pool that gym has access to". Because as mean as it sounds there's only so much you can polish crap and when you've run out of polish you've just got shiny crap.
I know that I had shortcomings as a coach, several. But one thing I always did, every single time, was make sure that the score sheet was as maxed as possible. So it wasn't that I had a lack of preparation, or a lack of effort. There were competitions we walked into and were beaten thoroughly, and then there were those competitions we walked into that I believed it would be difficult and all of a sudden a really solid team drops a stunt, their jumps were off and a tumbling pass doesn't land, and if we can just hit everything we have a shot. More often than not when we hit everything and a big gym had several flubs we were still beaten. And often the comments left by judges didn't make sense, one I remember because of it's lack of an explanation was "shakey basket" (yes spelled incorrectly and everything) how the eff is a basket "shakey"? The answer is because we were under a microscope and were a long shot to beat all of those established programs anyway.
As a coach I learned early on that I had to take accountability for my actions, probably more so than most occupations, and I was never afraid to take blame when it was due, one of my very first competitions I lost for my youth squad because we had a legality issue. I misunderstood something in the rule book and without the loss of those points we would have won. As soon as our routine ended the event coordinator came over and told me about or pyramid. As soon as awards ended the parents had questions and everyone of them that asked I told them that I screwed up, I apologized and promised to make it better. And then I did. But those times, when I knew what our routine should have been worth and our performance didn't match our placement it's hard to think that well known gyms don't get the nod every now and then.
Oh and your argument about the great coaches always finding a way to win is really weak, you named coaches in non judged sports, they just have to score more points than the other team they don't have to win the hearts and minds of the ones controlling the score also. I could also talk about your "win with whatever athletes they have" argument as every coach you named has complete control over who plays for them. All those college coaches recruit to fit their systems and Belicheat (known cheater, caught more than once) is also his teams general manager.
I agree that it is too easy to blame things other than your own faults but when objectively examined and nothing else makes sense, bias does.
