Seriously, though, it's like whoever wrote these rules wasn't paying attention. I think they can claim "safety" and "image" all they want, but it doesn't hold any water.
No Mini 3? Great... my 6, 7, and 8 year olds will still throw their tucks with the Youth 3 team. Better yet, I'll just call the whole team "Youth 3".
Restrict all Youth 5 tumbling, restrict baskets, restrict pyramids? I'll just send my 10-12 year-olds with wicked awesome double fulls and sweet kick doubles to my Junior 5 team. Or... just call them "Junior 5".
The point is that if you have a Mini 3 team, chances are pretty high you have Youth 3 team. If you have a Youth 5 team, you probably have a Junior 5 team. And just to drive the point home - you can register them in any division since ONLY Senior has a bottom age.
Stop separating all-girl/co-ed Junior 3/4? So my all-girl team will just have to start throwing harder skills to hang with the co-ed teams, push my ratio up, so on and so forth. Safe? Oh yeah. I'll just lose all season.
No crop tops for Junior? AWESOME. So the 10-year old on Senior 2 can wear one but the 14 year-old on Junior 5 can't... or the 12 year-old on Youth 5. The uninformed spectators (which I think are actually pretty few...) will totally understand that we're trying to make our image better.
And then - to put the icing on the cake, they call out the "males" for "exaggerated and theatrical movements". Is this FOR REAL? Man, some of the best dancers I've seen on the floor are MALE and they are definitely theatrical. Does this lower the quality of the sport? Does it negatively impact our image to show that we appreciate EVERY SINGLE athlete? (Why don't you go ahead and call out the special needs teams for not performing level-appropriate skills? They are listed as level 3 in the age grid.)
[[The special needs comment is totally sarcastic. I love watching these teams and I'm so glad our sport is able to give them that opportunity!!]]