I absolutely hate the amount of teams that are not fully maximizing the amount of stunts in the air. I've seen so many teams have 4+ people doing absolutely nothing during the majority of the stunt sequence, and then just add those people in for like a random group ticktock and that's it. It's especially prevalent in the x-small and medium divisions.
The rules nowadays emphasize maximizing stunt difficulty instead of putting up as many stunts as possible. There never used to be this much hiding behind stunts and doing nothing. It used to be that a 20-member team did 5 stunts, and some teams even put up 6 stunts to show added strength, even if they were just straight-up stunts. But nowadays your stunt difficulty has to be insane and there's such a heavy emphasis on "hitting zero" that you're encouraged to do fewer stunts, not more.
Some XS teams put up 2 stunts with 5-8 people literally just standing around watching them or doing arm motions. At least have the kids tumble and enhance the routine in that way. Some teams legitimately don't have another flier or backspot, and some teams legitimately only have 11 kids to work with. But then there are other teams that could easily field a full team but intentionally shrink it down so that they only do 2 stunts. And many XS teams only do 2 baskets even if they have 3 legit stunt groups. Baskets take a lot of exertion, and if you have a stunt group skip that part of the routine, that should be seen as a sign of weakness that factors into your score.
But many teams don't have enough people that can do the skills and fit the necessary positions to simply add in another stunt group. They might have a tall flyer, 2 bases who are mismatched in size, and another kid who isn't really tall enough to backspot. So even in a mega gym, they may end up with leftover kids that can't form a stunt group.
The stunting difficulty required is extremely high, even at the lower levels. You get a lot of "new to Allstar" kids on Level 2 teams who just learned a basic lib, competing against teams that are tick tocking everywhere and maxing out stunts. So you end up hiding the "beginner stunt group" and having them do nothing instead of giving that group competitive experience stunting (which is what the lower levels should be for). But even in Level 2, you're already encouraged to show such maxed out difficulty that you end up hiding people (yes, there are Prep divisions for beginners, but it's not the same, and there are so many Prep divisions that it often feels more like exhibition than a competition).
I'm even seeing kids standing like statues in a
jump formation, where the back row doesn't bother jumping. "Nuggeting" is a term that used to be used frequently in cheer to call out the kids hiding in the back doing nothing, but now it's become normalized--- even in jumps.
I wish the rules put more emphasis on quantity of stunts, even if it's not the highest of difficulty stunt. A less difficult stunt should still be seen as better than nuggeting in the back (or removing those kids from the team all together and competing with like 10 people).
