All-Star No Competition At Competitions?

[Cheeemomlife]

Question: ARE KIDS EVEN EXCITED TO WIN (EXAMPLE) NCA or other big comps anymore ( like Cheersport?)

(Serious question. All I really see these days is excitement over bid reveals, getting paid, going to Worlds, scoring for bids, etc.)

We won NCA last year and it was the best thing ever. Everyone was crying. I would take winning NCA over anything Summit related any day. We don't have an option for Worlds, so i can't comment about that.

 

[UCFKnights07]

WHAT IF...
This was more like a true sports competition system.

Early competitions in the season were all regionals with no bids given out so they are truly to get your skills in order and get competition experience.

“Nationals” could only use that title if they had 10 teams per division or greater. Encourage competition in each division not just participation with multiple divisions with only 1 team.

Worlds and Summit have a limit on the number of bids so that the nature of “elite” competition doesn’t get watered down.

Proper, safe execution of skills is always priority so that any improper tumbling or building does not get credit, therefore would not put kids at risk. (think gymnastics level standards)

WHAT IF...

basically it reminds me of the high school format, or at least when i was in high school back then. heck even the pop warner cheer days did it that way. You had to place in the top 4 or 5 in a end of the year conference competition to go to regionals and in order to go to nationals you had to place in the top 3 of your division. It could technically be done in a larger scale for allstar. But i find allstar to be a lot more of a money business then high school cheer is, so i cant see it ever going that way.

 

[Natalia5]

At the last 4 comps I have attended, I have seen an increasing number of divisions with one team in it. National Champion jackets earned by outscoring no one. There are summit divisions currently with one team in them. Will they even have that division at summit if there is one team? Why does this seem to be occurring so often this season?

YES! This ^^^^ I have been questioning this since our very first competition and with the new Summit bids being awarded to the HIGHEST scoring team in that level or division (can't recall which) but if you had no direct apple to apple competition who is to say that you would have still had the HIGHEST score? Now, I am cool with the combining of divisions i.e. medium and small teams going head to head but I am not a fan of a default win. Anyone can ask my CP and she can tell you that the "wins" we got because we were the only team in our division I don't count those and frankly I get a little mad about it. Not to sound cliche but to me it's like that part in the movie Bring It On: " In order to be the best you have to COMPETE against the best"

 

[SharkDad]

WHAT IF...
This was more like a true sports competition system.

Early competitions in the season were all regionals with no bids given out so they are truly to get your skills in order and get competition experience.

There could be limits placed on how far teams could travel prior to January. Teams who wished to travel a greater distance could apply for a waiver showing that in order to compete it was "necessary." This should not be a formality, but rather a way to keep teams located in their own region. I would think a 200-mile radius would cover most situations, but I'm from KY where IN, St. Louis, Louisville, Nashville, Lexington, etc are all well within the limit and have multiple decent competitions a year. I am not sure how this would work in say Wyoming or Nebraska.

“Nationals” could only use that title if they had 10 teams per division or greater. Encourage competition in each division not just participation with multiple divisions with only 1 team.

Limit Nationals competitions to January/February/March, and in order to use the word "nationals" they must demonstrate that they had teams from x number of states the year before. Each competition company is limited to using this word for ONE event per year.

Worlds and Summit have a limit on the number of bids so that the nature of “elite” competition doesn’t get watered down.

Going back to my post which you shimmy'ed, here's a good place for my RPI format to come in. Regional competitions carry a certain amount of weight, and nationals carry twice that much. The incentives start to pile up for event promoters to offer a TRUE nationals experience, and teams to attend one of those competitions.

Proper, safe execution of skills is always priority so that any improper tumbling or building does not get credit, therefore would not put kids at risk. (think gymnastics level standards)

To a degree, this falls out of the scope of what I was discussing, but I understand where you're coming from, understand that you weren't directly referencing my idea, and understand/believe in this whole-heartedly. The All-Star industry does not penalize poorly executed skills enough in their execution scores. Then they double-fail when the deductions for falls/touches/etc are not big enough to truly defer a coach from leaving bad skills in the routine. For example, a stunt fall should be penalized to the degree mathematically it makes more sense for a team to compete level 4 skills in a level 5 routine than risk falling on a level 5 skill.

WHAT IF...

Well, crap, I answered in my quote of your post without thinking about it.

Together I think our posts make a good complete thought. Too bad the industry influences won’t ever go that direction.

 

[Fleximom]

YES! This ^^^^ I have been questioning this since our very first competition and with the new Summit bids being awarded to the HIGHEST scoring team in that level or division (can't recall which) but if you had no direct apple to apple competition who is to say that you would have still had the HIGHEST score? Now, I am cool with the combining of divisions i.e. medium and small teams going head to head but I am not a fan of a default win. Anyone can ask my CP and she can tell you that the "wins" we got because we were the only team in our division I don't count those and frankly I get a little mad about it. Not to sound cliche but to me it's like that part in the movie Bring It On: " In order to be the best you have to COMPETE against the best"

exactly. even at the really big comps {NCA} there are divisions with 1 or 2 teams. Regionally, I have seem 9-10 divisions with just 1 team. When my daughter won a jacket against no one, it was a little embarrassing. Fortunately, they were the highest scoring team in the whole level, so they obtained a bid to summit by beating other same-level teams. But I have seem many summit bids given to the only eligible team at a comp. It's nuts

 

[NerdMobile]

The approach I taught my daughter from her entry to this sport at age 7 was one of self competition. Were you better than last time? Did you fix that problem? Did you keep going when things went awry? What I hoped for my daughter to get out of cheer was a development of pride, of commitment, of perseverance...she is not going to put I can do a double on a resume, but those other skills of teamwork and leadership will last her through life. As this was the value we were seeking from the sport it framed the whole "how much I pay for" argument in a different way. The money I pay is not for beating that other team, winning a jacket, or getting a bid...it's for those life skills. Since this approach means in the end we aren't really caring about final placement, but improvement week to week being the only team in a division is irrelevant.
This has certainly made us the outlier. A few years ago my CP and a large number of other youth aged girls completed a year on a level 3 team (she and a few others were sr, they were youth 3) they all had spent 2 years with lvl 4 skills and had a yr of lvl 5 skills under their belts. The y3 team parents met with the gym owners and refused the creation of a y4 before tryouts had even been scheduled. They cited too much money to pay to have no competition. It was frustrating. The girls lacked the maturity for a higher than youth team...but the gym caved. They created a j4, pulling some senior 5s down to base and it was a disaster. Most of the youth girls left for another gym and the j4 team floundered all year. Had they valued the life skills rather than the bid, well it would have been incredible.
I work in Higher ed- this sense of quantifying everything with a dollar and because we pay we quantify an equivalent outcome is ruining the world. Not everything can or should have a dollar amount tied to it. If your focus is always the money you miss out on all the important parts of the process.

 

[all4sarah]

When my daughter was in early elementary school she wouldn't run races, wouldn't join the swim team because she didn't want to compete. She was afraid of losing. Competitive cheer slowly drew her out of her shell and made her try her best at cheer and at school. She wanted to do her best and she wanted to beat other teams. She wanted to get in the honor society and get awards. So many lessons when they won and lost, they came in 2nd at cheer sport, and they got a summit bid (all different competitions). 2nd place was tough on her. Then the next year her team came in last at cheersport. That builds character and gave us lots to discuss about doing her individual best and how you can't always win. I feel like it is hard to measure success in a competitive team sport unless you can compete.

 

[CLynn]

The approach I taught my daughter from her entry to this sport at age 7 was one of self competition. Were you better than last time? Did you fix that problem? Did you keep going when things went awry? What I hoped for my daughter to get out of cheer was a development of pride, of commitment, of perseverance...she is not going to put I can do a double on a resume, but those other skills of teamwork and leadership will last her through life. As this was the value we were seeking from the sport it framed the whole "how much I pay for" argument in a different way. The money I pay is not for beating that other team, winning a jacket, or getting a bid...it's for those life skills. Since this approach means in the end we aren't really caring about final placement, but improvement week to week being the only team in a division is irrelevant.
This has certainly made us the outlier. A few years ago my CP and a large number of other youth aged girls completed a year on a level 3 team (she and a few others were sr, they were youth 3) they all had spent 2 years with lvl 4 skills and had a yr of lvl 5 skills under their belts. The y3 team parents met with the gym owners and refused the creation of a y4 before tryouts had even been scheduled. They cited too much money to pay to have no competition. It was frustrating. The girls lacked the maturity for a higher than youth team...but the gym caved. They created a j4, pulling some senior 5s down to base and it was a disaster. Most of the youth girls left for another gym and the j4 team floundered all year. Had they valued the life skills rather than the bid, well it would have been incredible.
I work in Higher ed- this sense of quantifying everything with a dollar and because we pay we quantify an equivalent outcome is ruining the world. Not everything can or should have a dollar amount tied to it. If your focus is always the money you miss out on all the important parts of the process.

I love your positive approach and yes agree my daughter has learned so many life skills and that is absolutely part of the cost. However, there are other ways to acquire these skills that are in fact a lot less expensive. There is also the cost of missed days of school which is another issue entirely. It just seems to have become so excessive, and if you have a philosophy of “were you better than the last time” etc then you REALLy don’t need to spend the money. Let’s just have a showcase at the gym.

 

[CLynn]

Together I think our posts make a good complete thought. Too bad the industry influences won’t ever go that direction.

So many good ideas. There is probably something to take away from golf too, using the Fed Ex cup as a template. Ignoring the elephan$ in the roo$...how has that been working out as participation continues to decline? Sigh.

 

[OldskoolKYcheercoach]

So many good ideas. There is probably something to take away from golf too, using the Fed Ex cup as a template. Ignoring the elephan$ in the roo$...how has that been working out as participation continues to decline? Sigh.

Please provide details. I have a phenomenal golfer on my cheer team, but I know little about the sport except she’s my favorite golfer.

 

[DonnaM]

I love your positive approach and yes agree my daughter has learned so many life skills and that is absolutely part of the cost. However, there are other ways to acquire these skills that are in fact a lot less expensive. There is also the cost of missed days of school which is another issue entirely. It just seems to have become so excessive, and if you have a philosophy of “were you better than the last time” etc then you REALLy don’t need to spend the money. Let’s just have a showcase at the gym.

Or go to mostly local comps. I believe we are up to four this season that woild have been one day, drive in, compete, drive out that our teams (except for tinies, cheerabilities and prep) haven’t done because they are WC only or don’t give bids at all. The primary reason for going to the big Nationals is that they give more bids.

And I admit, I like them because you can compete apples to apples. At Nationals, you don’t have a D2 team of 12 kids competing against D1 teams of 28, because usually they can split D1 and D2 and small/medium. I’m not sure it means much that a giant D1 gym with teams at every level and maxed out skills can score higher than small D2 gyms where they have one senior 3 or 4.2 that is a mix of the experienced folks who didn’t want to drive to a bigger gym and folks new to cheer.

 

[CLynn]

Please provide details. I have a phenomenal golfer on my cheer team, but I know little about the sport except she’s my favorite golfer.

Summing it up, there is a regular season and playoff season. In the regular season you earn points based on your results (wins and placements), and different events carry different point values. Once the regular season concludes, the top 125 players in points enter the Fed Ex Cup playoffs. The playoffs are three events where you still earn points but at 4x's the amount of regular season. There are progressive cuts from 125 to 75 to 30 and those final 30 play in the Tour Championship. In that final tour championship those with the most points actually get an advantage for the final round (couple stroke advantage in golf terms)
I like about this sort of approach for the regular season for a few reasons:
- during the regular season you actually are still competing for something tangible even without direct competition
- you can still pick and choose events strategically. If you attend events with enough points (ex. NCA Dallas) you can sit out some others
-it rewards that really consistent team that often comes in 2nd without "bid chasing" around the country
-Along the way you can still be the winner of any of the regular season events but only the winner of the final Tour Championship is the Tour champion

I would sign up for most of the ideas thrown about in this thread or a combination, but realize what I want as a parent (spend less time and money traveling, see more competition, fewer splits/levels) is probably the opposite of what Varsity is trying to do.

 

[california cheer mom]

We won NCA last year and it was the best thing ever. Everyone was crying. I would take winning NCA over anything Summit related any day. We don't have an option for Worlds, so i can't comment about that.

I'm kind of the opposite, NCA splits out into A/B/C (and sometimes even D&E!) splits. So winning as Y2 for example, you could be 1 of 5 D1 Y2 winners. Or whatever the larger divisions are. For Summit there is 1 ultimate winner.

 

[Sparkle Mom]

At summit you can only cross down 1 level though. So if the level 1 team and level 3+ team both got bids they couldn't both compete with the crossovers.

Yes but some teams are willing to take the lower level team instead to guarantee a top placement. It happens each year. Last year teams did it with international but this year the rule was changed. You can’t prevent gyms from taking select teams to NCA or Summit if they pick and choose which teams are going to go and which don’t. The athletes still all get to go since they are all crossovers.

 

[swmom01]

Lets not forget crossovers such as Kenley which are a level or two above skill wise.

USASF rules state that you can only cross over 1 level. Ex. If you are on a level 5 team you can crossover to level 4. Also you can only have a certain amount of athletes cross over depending on team size. This gives athletes the opportunity to be on more than one team. It takes more than 4 or 5 athletes to make a team especially when there are 30+ athletes on said team.


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