There is no doubt that people's opinion is influenced by their circumstances. I am certain that mine is. I am also pretty sure that the mega-gyms aren't going to win much sympathy with their concerns. (Who cares if it is unfair? You are drowning in athletes anyway.)
For what it is worth, my personal worry isn't whether a theoretical team of 12 Cheer Athletics athletes can compete in the XS division at Worlds 2017. We probably wouldn't have a team in one of those divisions this season even if we had the option. I am much more concerned with 3 trends and the steps this takes in all of those directions.
1.
Adding more divisions in an attempt to solve every issue. Some issues have been greatly helped by adding levels/divisions/gym categories/etc. However, there is a point when a lack of competition is more of a negative than whatever positive you gain from further splitting teams. Granted, 2 more divisions at Worlds probably won't mean anyone competes by themselves, but despite a supposed declining number of teams nationally, we continue to find ways to split them up further. How long before the gyms with 126 athletes complain that they can't fairly compete with gyms of 700, so we make D1/D2/D3? What about teams of 8 athletes? XXS? Each division can make sense in the small picture, but what about the big picture? How many different ways do we need to split up the competition pool?
2.
Changing rules to favor particular special interest groups. At Worlds alone, we have seen it with the "international division" scoresheets, the limitations on finals based on geography, and now we have special divisions effectively only for certain types of gyms. You can argue that the intent is only to help a particular subset of sympathetic gyms, but in many cases, the USASF is essentially pushing down on one side of the scale in order to raise up the other. I understand that if you are one of the businesses getting a boost, you are excited about it, but do we want USASF playing that role?
3.
Creating incentives for gyms to stay small. In theory, part of the USASF's mission is to increase overall participation in all star cheer. With seemingly good intentions, they continue to set up incentives for gyms to not grow. There are two big examples:
- The scoresheet bases difficulty on ratios to help smaller teams - coaches intentionally put fewer athletes on teams.
- Gyms 125 and under have their own optional events/divisions - gyms stop registering all of their athletes, stop taking all teams to sanctioned events, or worse - start turning athletes away to avoid being D1.