All-Star Ways To Eliminate Sandbagging

[GreatWhite92]

With all the talk in the amazing lvl 2 teams thread, I figured we could have a place to share ideas about ways to stop sandbagging.

My thought is that if athletes were credentialed at their true level then a team could be composed of whatever level athletes they want BUT....they may not compete at a lower level then the average of the athletes level credentialing.
This would help small gyms who need to place higher athletes on lower teams, but keep teams from competing at too low of a level.

For example if Team A has 5 lvl 5 athletes, 5 lvl 4 athletes, 5 lvl 3 athletes, and 5 lvl 2 athletes all on one team, then their average would be level 3.5...

now there are two options..
1.you could either round up the normal way so average 3.5 would be level 4 and up, and 3.4 would be level 3 and up.

2.Just take the first number, so 3.0-3.9 would be level 3 and up, 4.0-4.9 would be level 4 and up..

Does anyone else have any other ideas?

 

[cheermommaRN]

I gave my idea on the level 2 thread but will reiterate it here....
Some of us moms were discussing this last night at practice and here is what we came up with. Run it like travel hockey, teams form and gyms declare their teams with rosters by December. Most programs have competed once or twice by this time and should know what level they want the team to be at. Once the deadline has passed your teams are set (level wise) for the Nationals season. This would not affect crossovers because you can roster them on your team. If there is an injury and it is enough time out from a comp then you submit a form similar to a Leave of Absence form including the name of the rostered child that is injured and the name of the substitution that is being used. If it is a comp injury or during warmups, a substitute can be brought in but they must be on a roster currently with the gym.
Any gym wanting to form a team after the December cutoff must register them in the All Star Rec divisions and an athlete can not be rostered to an AS team and a rec team at the same time.
This accomplishes two things...1. It makes it unappealing to gyms to make half year "Dallas" teams with higher level athletes from their gym but doesn't create an issue for small gyms that use crossovers to their teams. The issue is not a team with a few higher level crossovers, the issue is teams stacking their team with a majority of higher level athletes for the intention of winning Nationals. 2. It will help gyms establish all star rec teams which I believe is going to become very big in the upcoming seasons for kids that want to do AS but want to have a life as well or are new to the sport and want to compete. Cheer Athletics, Excite, and ProSpirit all have AS Rec teams that have been very successful for their gyms in this area. I personally hope Spirit jumps on this next season and offers Purple, Black, and White teams.

 

[fiercerando88]

Any gym wanting to form a team after the December cutoff must register them in the All Star Rec divisions and an athlete can not be rostered to an AS team and a rec team at the same time.

But what about gyms like Twisters who formed Weathergirls later in the season (it was late December this year IIRC)? If they register as a 'rec' team does that mean they won't be allowed to go to worlds? Just curious.

 

[GreatWhite92]

But what about gyms like Twisters who formed Weathergirls later in the season (it was late December this year IIRC)? If they register as a 'rec' team does that mean they won't be allowed to go to worlds? Just curious.

That is true...It is not like they are forming that team to compete lvl 1 at nca...Most athletes are competing at a higher level than the rest of the season.

 

[Deleted member 15]

Some of us moms were discussing this last night at practice and here is what we came up with. Run it like travel hockey, teams form and gyms declare their teams with rosters by December. Most programs have competed once or twice by this time and should know what level they want the team to be at. Once the deadline has passed your teams are set (level wise) for the Nationals season. This would not affect crossovers because you can roster them on your team. If there is an injury and it is enough time out from a comp then you submit a form similar to a Leave of Absence form including the name of the rostered child that is injured and the name of the substitution that is being used. If it is a comp injury or during warmups, a substitute can be brought in but they must be on a roster currently with the gym.

As an industry, we don't have the infrastructure in place to do this yet.

 

[Deleted member 15]

The idea of credentialing athletes and limiting them to competing one level up or down won't work as long as there are 3 categories to credential and the gyms are the one doing the credentialing. With this setup I can make it so every kid in my gym is eligible to compete at every level by saying they are level 2 in one category and level 4 in another.

 

[GreatWhite92]

The idea of credentialing athletes and limiting them to competing one level up or down won't work as long as there are 3 categories to credential and the gyms are the one doing the credentialing. With this setup I can make it so every kid in my gym is eligible to compete at every level by saying they are level 2 in one category and level 4 in another.

Thats why I feel as if making it to where you can have whatever level credentialed athletes on a team together and taking the average might work better. will coaches manipulate certain athletes credential level to make their average where they want it? yes...but I feel like its harder to bring your average up and down with out changing multiple credentials.

I also think credentialing should be down more with their tumbling skills then stunting skills. Stunting is a group effort...not a solo thing. It is easier to teach someone to stunt with other people than it is to tumble by your self, hence why we have a 4.2 level...

 

[TheUltimateFan]

The idea of credentialing athletes and limiting them to competing one level up or down won't work as long as there are 3 categories to credential and the gyms are the one doing the credentialing. With this setup I can make it so every kid in my gym is eligible to compete at every level by saying they are level 2 in one category and level 4 in another.

This why this idea was vetoed early on in the original thread. Correct.

Having a gym and an athlete make a decision to be registered as an athlete at a single level (not by skill) allows the gym to decide how best they want to use that athlete within the program, according to their own strengths and weaknesses and the needs of their team.

I can't see this registering of each skill being manageable, based on sheer volume of data. It would be equivalent to letting a gymnast compete level 5 on floor, level 7 on bars, level 10 on beam.... Doesn't happen for a reason. Maybe someone has an example from another team sport where this does work, and how?

 

[GreatWhite92]

This why this idea was vetoed early on in the original thread. Correct.

Having a gym and an athlete make a decision to be registered as an athlete at a single level (not by skill) allows the gym to decide how best they want to use that athlete within the program, according to their own strengths and weaknesses and the needs of their team.

I can't see this registering of each skill being manageable, based on sheer volume of data. It would be equivalent to letting a gymnast compete level 5 on floor, level 7 on bars, level 10 on beam.... Doesn't happen for a reason. Maybe someone has an example from another team sport where this does work, and how?

In the majorette world...they have novice, beginner, intermediate, advanced and you can't move up a level until you've won so many titles in that level...not exactly the same thing and I don't think that would really work here but they at least have a solid rule as to what division you are competing in.

 

[TheUltimateFan]

Thats why I feel as if making it to where you can have whatever level credentialed athletes on a team together and taking the average might work better. will coaches manipulate certain athletes credential level to make their average where they want it? yes...but I feel like its harder to bring your average up and down with out changing multiple credentials.

I also think credentialing should be down more with their tumbling skills then stunting skills. Stunting is a group effort...not a solo thing. It is easier to teach someone to stunt with other people than it is to tumble by your self, hence why we have a 4.2 level...

Let's look at this mathematically, using 18 athletes. A coach places 8 declared level 5 athletes with 10 declared level 4 athletes on one team. Your average allows you to compete level 4. But you have 8 level 5 athletes that can hit the scoresheet in each category. That means you only need one of your level 4 athletes that can hit each individual skill to be able to max out the scoresheet. And yet the ones 'doing the maxing' are almost exclusively defined level 5 athletes. Unless I am seeing this wrong, it puts us back where we started.

Requiring 2/3 of the athletes on any team to be true to level makes maxing the scoresheet the primarily result of the majority skills at the declared level, not the exceptions.

 

[icame2WERQ]

Sounds like a lot of paper work

 

[GreatWhite92]

Let's look at this mathematically, using 18 athletes. A coach places 8 declared level 5 athletes with 10 declared level 4 athletes on one team. Your average allows you to compete level 4. But you have 8 level 5 athletes that can hit the scoresheet in each category. That means you only need one of your level 4 athletes that can hit each individual skill to be able to max out the scoresheet. And yet the ones 'doing the maxing' are almost exclusively defined level 5 athletes. Unless I am seeing this wrong, it puts us back where we started.

Requiring 2/3 of the athletes on any team to be true to level makes maxing the scoresheet the primarily result of the majority skills at the declared level, not the exceptions.

However, if you have 8 lvl 5 athletes and 12 lvl 4 athletes your still not at 2/3 to compete level 5 either...which I could see as unfair too. Forcing a team with more lvl 4 athletes then lvl 5 athletes to go lvl 5 would make that lvl 5 team not be able to hit the score sheet anywhere which is not exactly fair to the athletes either..

 

[RockstarCheer]

I gave my idea on the level 2 thread but will reiterate it here....
Some of us moms were discussing this last night at practice and here is what we came up with. Run it like travel hockey, teams form and gyms declare their teams with rosters by December. Most programs have competed once or twice by this time and should know what level they want the team to be at. Once the deadline has passed your teams are set (level wise) for the Nationals season. This would not affect crossovers because you can roster them on your team. If there is an injury and it is enough time out from a comp then you submit a form similar to a Leave of Absence form including the name of the rostered child that is injured and the name of the substitution that is being used. If it is a comp injury or during warmups, a substitute can be brought in but they must be on a roster currently with the gym.
Any gym wanting to form a team after the December cutoff must register them in the All Star Rec divisions and an athlete can not be rostered to an AS team and a rec team at the same time.
This accomplishes two things...1. It makes it unappealing to gyms to make half year "Dallas" teams with higher level athletes from their gym but doesn't create an issue for small gyms that use crossovers to their teams. The issue is not a team with a few higher level crossovers, the issue is teams stacking their team with a majority of higher level athletes for the intention of winning Nationals. 2. It will help gyms establish all star rec teams which I believe is going to become very big in the upcoming seasons for kids that want to do AS but want to have a life as well or are new to the sport and want to compete. Cheer Athletics, Excite, and ProSpirit all have AS Rec teams that have been very successful for their gyms in this area. I personally hope Spirit jumps on this next season and offers Purple, Black, and White teams.

That's not true and wouldn't work for us. Our first competition is always Spirit of Hope Nationals the 2nd weekend of January.

 

[VTX]

I love the idea of a percentage of the athletes must be the level they are competing at. However coaching at a extremely small gym I see some issues with the only being allowed to cross up or down one level. Say we have a few athletes reach level 5 before anyone else but don't have the ability to yield a team higher then level 3, where does that leave the 1 or 2 athletes who have progressed extremely fast?

 

[GreatWhite92]

I love the idea of a percentage of the athletes must be the level they are competing at. However coaching at a extremely small gym I see some issues with the only being allowed to cross up or down one level. Say we have a few athletes reach level 5 before anyone else but don't have the ability to yield a team higher then level 3, where does that leave the 1 or 2 athletes who have progressed extremely fast?

Thats the main reason I don't like that rule...i could foresee small gyms not being able to keep their higher level athletes because they cant compete there, they dont want to wait till everyone else in the gym catches up to be able to compete..