All-Star Too Much Money Not To Win?

[armycheermom]

I personally feel that you can be a competitive gym,without winning first at every competition. Is the gym teaching valuable life lessons? Is your child making relationships to last a lifetime? Are the getting proper technique? Are they happy? Then yes the program is competitive and you are a winning program.

Now to me,I don't really care if you win 1st place in every division and win grand champs in every level,if you're teaching bad technique,have horrible morals,my cp feels like she has no friends and/or love coming front the gym or is just flat out unhappy,then to me,you aren't a competitive program, no matter how much you may win.

To me,that's the difference between a competitive gym vs. a non-competitive gym.

 

[cheermomforever]

With it being only a month in no one really knows how the team will mesh. Every time u hit the floor it only matters what they do in those 2:30 minutes, not what u did last year. Last month or last weekend. No one can predict what the season holds for any gym!


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[TheVipersMom]

Winning is not everything but it's different for some kids. We have been on teams before this gym that never won anything at all and it sucked my kid left every competition crying because she did her best and they still got last or 2nd to last. Seeing the majority of her team did not care in the least was worse. Or hearing parents say after every competition that we lost because all those other teams were stacking kids, yes I'm so sure every single team we ever encountered was stacking. Yeah ok.

My daughter has went on to do 2 very successful seasons of winning most competitions and big ones. Some of y'all have made comments about how excited your kid was to win their first jacket and didn't want to take it off and my kid is just as excited after winning her 8th jacket in 2 seasons, she doesn't like it less because she already has a jacket. Each jacket means so much to her in a special way she can say, we worked hard for this and let's do it again next competition. Not that getting 2nd or 3rd means they didn't work hard. The only jacket she didn't get this season came after their best performance of the season and all though it was followed initially with sadness we celebrated that performance big time! Her team came a long way from the first competition to last and we were able to see that transformation full circle. I want my kid to learn all the things she can from this sport. Not just get an insane tumbling pass and a bunch of jackets but memories! Happy times with her team, working together to achieve each goal they set, and have a great attitude along the way. It's not that she can't learn those important skills losing all the time but why not win a few on the way. This sport is crazy expensive... If this gym that we are at stops providing everything else but the wins we would leave but if next season my daughters team doesn't have the best showing but she is still learning, growing, and having fun then we will still stick around and trust me it's not always bad to lose because though it sucks when your in the moment you know that hey someone was better then you today. I believe I may have mentioned this before but pretty much the loss my daughters first season at the new gym was at NCA they got 3rd place in the y2 division. Those girls were devastated! They gave an amazing day 2 performance out scoring the 1st place team but there day 1 score was to low to overcome it and sorry for them (and the 2nd place team who also outscored 1st place on day2) but this is a 2 day comp - it's moments like this when those girls can choose to learn from that loss.
The coaches told them what they did good at and what they needed to improve on but all those girls became hungry! Those 19 girls were split up the next season with some remaining on y2, a few aging out to j2, and a few others moved up to j3. It was the most amazing thing this year watching all those girls on 3 different teams who came so close last season to all get an NCA jacket on their respective teams the very next season. Maybe those teams were going to win NCA and maybe it has nothing to do with what all those girls took away from the loss last season but I know personally for my daughter it meant so much. She cried from the moment she performed, through awards, and onto the jacket room. I don't think I ever seen so much emotion from her alone in one day.

Again I don't think it's everything and having losses here and there generally teach the team a lot about theirselves. After the losses I see more team interaction, the girls build each other up, before competitions my daughters phone is blowing up with positive messages and words of encouragement from all her teammates. They know they are capable but they need to all work together to ensure they give their best performance.

However if my daughter was on a team that never won I think the morale of the team would be lower. Jenny would be thinking to herself if Suzie would stop falling, if Debbie could remember the counts maybe we would have a chance at winning. I feel like not being able to have those moments of knowing it's possible with your team would only make it harder for everyone to work together as one.

The gym my daughter is at is not the gym for everyone. My daughter gets a lot of questions asking are our coaches mean because we win a lot. I wouldn't say you will meet them all and get the warm and fuzzies but the love they have for the kids is insane.

I know no one agrees with me so I'm only saying this as my personal opinion but I would never go to any gym or a random parent at the gym and ask that. I would do my own research of not only that info about placements but all the other important things as well. Definitely not everything but can definitely be the deciding factor in one gym over the other if everything else is the same!

Don't let people on here fool you though, I have been told by most all parents that switched to my daughters gym that they moved because they were tired of losing. I just really hope for them that they like everything else that comes with it too.
Eta: oh and I hope they win as well because that would sure be a let down. Lol

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[BlockHead]

Maybe because those consistent last-place finishes would be a testament to the sub-par training at that child's gym.

I do agree with this. I don't believe that her coaches are even close to the best in the business. Average at best. I do think that does hinder the girls to being the best that they can be.

When my CP when to her large, successful gym, I believe that she learned a lot about work ethic. She was expected to be there and she was at almost every practice (she missed 2 days last year). She understands that her team is counting on her, just like she is counting on them to show up. I do wonder if she would think the same way if she had never cheered for such a strict gym.

When we checked out CPs gym, one of the things that attracted me to is was that they really didn't have very many banners and trophies displayed for the cheerleaders. And the newest banner was from 20009. I knew then and there that they were probably not a winning program. Honestly, that attracted me to the gym. I knew that meant that it was going to be a "softer" environment for her.

If you ask her, she says that she never wants to cheer for anybody else again but her current gym. When I say she doesn't care if they win or not, I do not mean that she does not care about the team. They got 3rd place last year out of 8. You would have thought that they won the superbowl. She was beyond excited. But the losses don't get to her, because she knows in a couple of days she will be back at the gym with her friends.

 

[Mama Of 3 CP's]

I think everyone (that has a done a year or two of All Star Cheer) checks out how a gym's teams placed the previous year before moving them. That being said, it can mean a whole pile of nothing very quickly!

I moved my daughters last April after two years at their first gym. The new gym seemed a good fit for our family for many reasons and it was a bonus that they did excellent locally the past year, with most of the teams winning at nearly every competition and they took home one or two grand champs per competition. One team won the "nationals" competition they attended in Anaheim. For our state, that's big.

Because of all of this success, the gym grew tremendously and in order to fit everyone they had six large teams (30-32), new inexperienced coaches added to the staff, extra free tumbling time was no longer available because of the lack of floor space and a coach quit in October so the owner stepped back into a head coaching role for the season (which took a toll on the other teams that practiced those days because she could never help them) and she could never talk with parents/athletes two nights a week. Needless to say, it wasn't a successful season for any of the teams, not just in competition placements, but also in team spirit/unity, learning commitment to a team (attendance was atrocious), dedication to excellence and the tumbling skills just got sloppier and sloppier. They loss a massive amount of girls when the season was over.

So, remind the new mama on your CP's team, past success is not always an indicator of future success! Good luck this season with her.

 

[Jenniturtle]

I think any parent would be lying if they said they didn't care if their CP's team won or lost. We all would like to have winners but the difference is what we would do to get that win. My CP's gym is the only game in town. One of the best gyms in the state is about two hours away. If I wanted my child's whole life to be about winning I would drive her the two hours 2 to 3 days a week. But I also want her to be able to have a life, to be able to hang with friends, cheer at middle school, do normal 13 year old stuff. Our gym may not win every competition but we are family and love the experience she is getting there. Sure I would love her to get a jacket but right now I am just glad to see her love her team and the whole experience. This is our first full year of All star ( we did prep last year) and her excitement just keeps growing and growing.

 

[SparkleSpankies]

I look at this in the sense of.. do you hold your own at competition. Do you win? Do you place in the top? Are you one out of one in your division all the time? Am I wasting my $$ because the team is not placing athletes and trying to bump up a level and always ending in the bottom? Is the structure there just not the clean factor or the ability to hit? I think in a way it is a valid question just not phrased properly. It is a lot of money and it does teach more then just winning, but at the same time, I am not signing my kid up for a team who doesn't at least remain competitive all season if there are other choices.

 

[BlockHead]

I think any parent would be lying if they said they didn't care if their CP's team won or lost. We all would like to have winners but the difference is what we would do to get that win. My CP's gym is the only game in town. One of the best gyms in the state is about two hours away. If I wanted my child's whole life to be about winning I would drive her the two hours 2 to 3 days a week. But I also want her to be able to have a life, to be able to hang with friends, cheer at middle school, do normal 13 year old stuff. Our gym may not win every competition but we are family and love the experience she is getting there. Sure I would love her to get a jacket but right now I am just glad to see her love her team and the whole experience. This is our first full year of All star ( we did prep last year) and her excitement just keeps growing and growing.

I really don't care if they win. I pretty much already know that they won't win when we drive to the competition. I do believe that we get what we pay for. I pay about half per month from what we used to pay when my daughter was at her successful gym. Our current gym just got a new coach who does have a lot of experience in the cheer world (Summit, Worlds, etc). Perhaps if he can whip these girls into shape and give them good choreo, I might change my mind. Last season was kind of nice for me as a parent. I was able to just sit back and relax and enjoy the whole experience. At the old gym, I felt that stressful high that most parents feel because they knew their team had a chance. I remember watching the other teams and studying their skills and comparing them to our squads skills. Being disappointed when they came in 3rd, when I was so sure they were the best.

Yes, the cheerleaders on my CPs squad do care. They had one competition where almost all stunts fell, their pyramid never got up, and the music was over before their dance was. Tears were flowing. But they learned so much from that experience. It did make them so much stronger for their next competition. They did not win the next one, but they gelled together like I had never seen them. :-)

 

[dawgshow]

I think any parent would be lying if they said they didn't care if their CP's team won or lost. We all would like to have winners but the difference is what we would do to get that win. My CP's gym is the only game in town. One of the best gyms in the state is about two hours away. If I wanted my child's whole life to be about winning I would drive her the two hours 2 to 3 days a week. But I also want her to be able to have a life, to be able to hang with friends, cheer at middle school, do normal 13 year old stuff. Our gym may not win every competition but we are family and love the experience she is getting there. Sure I would love her to get a jacket but right now I am just glad to see her love her team and the whole experience. This is our first full year of All star ( we did prep last year) and her excitement just keeps growing and growing.

Sure, I love the win, but honestly I just want them to be competitive. I want them to have a legit chance to win since the actual competition results depend on so many ever changing factors. What I hate is when the team comes in dead last EVERY SINGLE TIME. The one time that happened, our coaches dropped a level after the third comp. Best thing for the team since they really couldn't hang with the big dogs.

 

[Persephone]

Do I care if CP´s team win? Yesss, IF they weren´t one out of one in their division.
It meant more to me in our early years - now having a 16yo with a long list of injuries in her career and a lot of ups and downs, good and bad experience- the win doesn´t mean that much to me as the experience over the years. Like @retiredl5cheer said: "Success in cheer spans across the child's entire life.".
For me success isn´t all about the win. But that´s my 2 cents.
I get angry when thing are inconsistent like choosing a level for the team which is obviously not appropriate, not having enough practice time because of holidays or coaches vacation or to many kids missing practice too often or kids giving not 100% during practice - then we´re not successful.
For CP I know it is different - she´s a perfectionist, she wants the win for herself and for her team and she always wants to give her 100% and expects the same from her coaches and team mates. On the other hand she wants a program to be family and a second home, no bullying, making friends and gaining new skills.

 

[THEJOEL]

Yes we put a lot of money into this. Face it this sport is financed by the parents.
With that being said. It's not about winning and losing. Someone has to come in second. It's what's taught when that does happen is what's important.
This is what I want for my money.
I want teams that are built on what skills kids have at tryouts, I want coaches who care about the kids, I want coaches who don't quit on their teams at a two day comp when they are in second place after day one, I want coaches who teach FUNdamentals, I want coaches who are well trained, I want to be treated like a customer not like an unpaid staff member and I want my CP to look forward to going to practice.
The medals are secondary if all your kid is learning from Allstar is winning at all costs and not knowing how to lose they are going to have a hard life when they get to the real world.

 

[schpo]

So, I've been sitting on this question for a few weeks now and figured I'd posed it to people who have far more experience than I do.

Our gym is letting girl's come in throughout the summer to see if our gym/team is for them. Since we're in a military town, PCSing is heavy over the summer so the few we've lost, have already been replaced by some new fresh faces.

A few weeks ago, a mom brought her daughter in and while sitting in the Parent's area; after figuring out I was a returner mom, point blank asked me how our girl's placed last year. For a second, I sat there and considered the question before answering her question, also including that my CP was on a team that our gym doesn't have this season and the team she moved up to, was something totally different last year so it was really hard to answer since obviously she wants the expectations of the team her CP would be on now.

I ended up asking her why she was curious and she basically said it's too much money to spend if the team doesn't win. I just nodded my head and didn't continue on with our conversation, frankly because I wasn't sure what to say.

If this were a bigger gym, a more well known gym even, maybe I'd understand that more. But I also feel like cheer teaches so much outside of winning, that the cost is definitely worth it even if they don't always win. Since our team does not travel out of state, financially it's not nearly as bad as what I expect to pay as CP ages.

How would you have responded?

Actually, I think it's a fair question. Why would you want to sign your child up for a gym that has the reputation of losing every single time?

 

[dawgshow]

Actually, I think it's a fair question. Why would you want to sign your child up for a gym that has the reputation of losing every single time?

I guess you have to define lose. Is it last place or anything but first place?


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[Helen uk uni cheer]

I guess you have to define lose. Is it last place or anything but first place?


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Sometimes last isnt that bad if for instance if you are in a large division and there are only like 4 points between first and last and only .4 from last to second to last I wouldnt be too disheartened

 

[12stepCheermom]

I guess you have to define lose. Is it last place or anything but first place?


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That's a fair question because I know people who believe both ways. I think you have to define what's a "win" for you. If it's just banners and trophies that can be done by any team if you just pick the right tier of competitions to attend. It doesn't mean a team is "good" necessarily.

Personally, if rather go head to head with the best and just be competitive. Sometimes you have to be realistic that, yeah you finished second but given who was first....second with a hit! Routine just has to be enough....and should be something you're proud of.


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