2016 Cheerleading Worlds Predictions

It’s just about that time of year again everybody! CHEERLEADING WORLDS! Let’s all do a synchronous hooray…HOORAY! This is the time of the season when people start predicting which teams they think will win cheerleading worlds. Each year for the past 3 years I’ve been saying that I’m going to do an in-depth podcast/YouTube video/blog on who I think will win worlds in each category…naturally that never happens, but this year “is the year.”

On a serious note, the lack of support is always what discourages me from doing such an extensive video, but I’ve decided to do it this year for myself…whoever reads/watches/listens will just be an extra incentive on my side 🙂

I’m still debating on whether I’m doing a YouTube video or a podcast as I go in-depth with my actual predictions. In all honesty, it would take hours and hours of typing for pages and pages of predictions that people don’t want to read. Maybe you guys can help me out with that. Leave your comments below with what you would rather have…a video or a podcast!

Yes, this blog is titled “2016 Cheerleading Worlds Predictions” but this is going to be a preview teaser of who I think will make the top 5-6 placements in the senior divisions only, and once I decide on which platform I want to further elaborate on, my actual predictions will be announced.

My predictions are based on (if it matters) this years performances at NCA Dallas and/or UCA Orlando. I’m going based off the routines that these teams put out, not what placements they received. With the updated scoring that’s going on at worlds ( i.e., bobbles counting as deductions) who KNOWS what will happen with teams who may not have perfected certain skills. Also, teams may have added difficulty to their routines, and I’m not affiliated with any of these gyms, so I wouldn’t know. These predictions are going off my knowledge of cheerleading, the scoring system, and the routines that have already been showcased to the world.

So…here goes nothing. Remember, these are in no particular order (except maybe alphabetical).

Small Senior

• Cheer Extreme SSX
• Green Bay Elite All Stars Lime
• ICE Lady Lightning
• Stingray All Stars Apple
• Woodlands Elite Generals

Small Senior Coed

• Brandon All Stars Senior Black
• California All Stars Smoed
• GymTyme All Stars Platinum
• KC Cheer Fierce Five
• Prodigy All Stars Midnight

Medium Senior

• California All Stars Aces
• Cheers and More Lady Respect
• FAME All Stars Super Seniors
• Spirit of Texas A Team
• Stingray All Stars Peach
• Top Gun All Stars Lady Jags

Medium Senior Coed

• California All Stars Black Ops
• Maryland Twisters Reign
• Twist and Shout Obsession
• Woodlands Elite Black Ops
• World Cup Odyssey

Large Senior

• Cheer Athletics Panthers
• Cheer Extreme Senior Elite
• Maryland Twisters F5
• Stingray All Stars Orange
• World Cup Shooting Stars

Large Senior Coed

• California All Stars Cali Coed
• Cheer Athletics Cheetahs
• Cheer Extreme Coed Elite
• Stingray All Stars Steel
• Top Gun All Stars TGLC

That’s it…my preliminary list of who I think will globe at worlds. If you guys think my list is WAY off, or if I’m forgetting anyone, comment and let me know. Don’t forget to let me know if you would rather have a YouTube video or a podcast on my final predictions. Thanks y’all!

Twitter: @cheer_ology

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Small Coed 5

In no particular order…why either of these teams could take first. 

Smoed:

• Crazy amounts of tumbling
• High to high double around
• Creative level appropriate pyramid structures
• Strong elite

Brandon Senior Black:

• Perfect stunt technique 
• High to high stretch 
• Non stop level appropriate pyramid
• Exciting dance 

Louisiana Cheer Force Gold:

• Difficult stunting
• Strong opening pyramid
• Great use of the floor
• Lots of standing gulls

Rockstar Beatles

• Creative level appropriate baskets
• Difficult elite with creative transitions
• Difficult and creative pyramid with multiple strictures 

KC Cheer Fierce 5:

• Partner stunt full ups
• Double up single leg
• Full around single leg 
• Kick double cradles 
• Full kick kick full basket

Crossovers: A New Cheer High or Low?

Crossovers. Double teamers. Triple teamers. Competing on more than one team. Whatever you want to call it, it’s definitely a hot topic in the sport of cheerleading. For those of you that are not familiar what a crossover competitor is, it is someone who competes on more than one team within their program. There are a plethora of reasons as to why gym owners have their athletes cross compete and I’ll try my best to explain the most common reasons…both the selfish and unselfish.

Not Enough Athletes

All gym owners and programs SHOULD place their athletes on teams based by levels and then age groups. If a program has x amount of level 2 athletes but the ages conflict so that  there might only be 7 kids on a Youth 2 aged 9 and younger, you might want to think about having athletes from other teams crossover to that team. Yes, it is possible for a team to be successful with 7 athletes (e.g. Allstar Athletics Lucky 7), however when you have a team of 7 exclusive flyers, back spots, or bases, it doesn’t work out too well. If you have a Junior 3 team that has age eligible athletes who can crossover to a Youth team and can contribute to that team by building stunt groups without forcing athletes to be a position they’re not physically fit to be, then yes let them crossover.

To Make Your Program Seem Bigger

If you have a program with 140 athletes and each athlete has their own team and each team has an average of 20 athletes, that’s about 7 teams. If it’s possible to make 3 or 4 more teams in the same level, they’re already in, then why not? Your program will seem bigger and more successful which attracts future clients.

To Win

This is one of the reasons crossovers should NOT be allowed. There are some programs who allow their level 3 and 4 athletes to compete as level 1 and 2 cheerleaders. Yes, everyone wants to win, however, what lesson are these athletes learning if you are taking your higher level athletes and putting them against true level 1 and 2 cheerleaders.

Cherita’s thoughts…

I understand having crossovers to make a team for the 7 or 8 athletes that are stuck without a team but I believe there should be rules and regulations for them. For instance, I think there should be a one level cross over limit. You should only be able to cross over to a team one level higher or lower than your primary team. I use the word primary, because I think there should only be one team an athlete is dedicated to. I also think there should be a limit of how many crossover athletes are on any given team. This will eliminate full squad or almost full squad crossovers from a level 4 to a level 2 for instance.  I’m not 100% against crossovers based on my experiences as a coach, but I do not agree with having multiple athletes crossover to a team and I also do not agree with competitors crossing from 2 or more levels up to a lower level just to create the impression that you’re better than you actually are.

Thanks for reading!

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What are your thoughts?

Universal Scoring System

I’m not all into the politics of scoring or why there is such a hold up in the universal scoring system, but I believe that if someone just took charge and said “this is how it’s going to be” and didn’t let parents and/or coaches run things, then it would be a fast increase in making all-star cheer a sport. I always use gymnastics as an example because that’s where I originated from. I was a gymnast for over 12 years, and it didn’t matter which competition I went to, I knew I would always be scored the same way. Yes it has changed in the instance that level 7 is now optional and there is now no such thing as a perfect 10, HOWEVER, when the scoring system changed for gymnastics, it just changed. One fell swoop and boom, it was done. I’m sure there was a lot in the developing stages that we didn’t see or weren’t aware of, but as soon as it changed, that was it. Okay…this is how we’re doing gymnastics scoring now. I’m sure people were upset, but what are they going to do about it? Quit? THAT’S AWESOME…we don’t need the negativity!

In an industry like cheerelading every competition or  wants to stand out and be different, but I don’t think scoring should have ANYTHING to do with that. You can go to a JAMFest competiton, a UCA competition, and an Epic Brands competition and I guarantee, you can and will find 3 differnt things that you like (and possibly dislike) at each one of those competitions. Every cheerleading company wants to be the best (understandable), but scoring should be the least of the worries at any competition. Yes, you might come across some crappy judges, but you can weed those out with the universal scoring system. Makes it that much easier.  As a cheer community, we should know what is level 1 appropriate across the board, we should know what a level 4 athlete SHOULD be able to do. I also think the universal scoring system will eliminate competitions who allow teams to compete in a level they should not be in. If a team/gym/program continues to try and push their kids to compete at a level they’re not ready for, they won’t win, and parents will get upset and leave that program.

People think that in order to have a successful gym, you have to have higher level teams…WRONG! In order to have a successful team you need…let’s say it all together…PROGRESSION! So what if you’re 9 years old on a level 1 team? As long as you’re learning step by step, you’ll be a great level 3 cheerleader one day, or maybe not. Cheerelading isn’t for everyone.

Back to the scoring system. There are too many people trying to determine what makes cheerleading special, and the people with the most power are money hungry, which is why some of this stuff is still allowed. I would rather have less people spending money on a successful industry than taking people for all they have. Rarely do you have gymnastics programs that have a bunch of athletes that are competing at a level that they shouldn’t be; mainly because of the progression system. But I also think another reason, is because gymnastics has been around for many years and it’s very established. In the cheerleading world, we need someone to lay down the law, this is how it’s going to be, because I said so. Yes, there will be upset people, but that’s the way of the world. Nobody is entitled, and we need to let people know that. Let’s enjoy cheerleading, let’s make good cheerelading enjoyable, let’s have a universal scoring system that is used at EVERY. SINGLE. COMPETITION. so that there isn’t so much diversity in our community. We know everyone has their favorite team and people will always complain about how they feel someone should have won, which happens in every sport, but when there becomes a full on argument about why this team SHOULD have won based on “skill sets” that’s where it needs to end. As a coach, you should know how to max out the score sheet, and it should be obvious to other cheer fans, or easily explained to people why another team won. There shouldn’t be any questions about why a judge called a bobble this or that. Just like in football, penalties are called that not everyone agrees with, and sometimes they’re called wrong, but there are protocols for things like that for competitions. Just like in football, the coach can throw the red flag, there are rules like that in cheerleading. Those rules need to be regulated as well, but they definitely need to be rules.

So many ideas floating around that probably need to be put into action so that we can finally become a sport. I know I don’t know everything and I definitely don’t have ALL the answers but I’m sure a universal scoring system would help our “non sport” become an offical sport.

Thank you for reading!

Twitter: cheer_ology

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E-mail: cherita.cheerology@gmail.com

“USASF” Judges

This is part two of my experience at the Hit Cheer and Dance competition. If you haven’t read part one, I highly suggest you check it out.  I also suggest that you read my NCA Judges ARE Fair post, just so you know how passionate and positive I am about the USASF judging system. I’m one to never question a judge, contest a score, complain about “bad” judging, or anything of the sort. BUT this was an instance where I just had to voice my opinion and try to UNDERSTAND how the judging system worked at this particular competition.

After day 1 was over, we were promised our score sheets and a day 2 schedule by 8:30 that night. 11:00 rolls around and we finally receive our e-mails. The program that I was with brought three level 1 teams to this competition. So when our head coach was reading our scores and our youth team had a score significantly lower than our senior team AND had a score lower than our mini team, I knew there was an issue. I’m not saying that our seniors or minis have a bad team, but they’re all level 1 and I know that our youth and seniors have the same amount of difficulty in their routines and that the minis don’t have as much difficulty as our youth and senior teams. If the scoring is USASF, there must be a judges error somewhere, which is fine, but I would like to get that fixed. Any judge knows how important scores are and knows that their job is to make sure scores are as accurate as possible so that the correct team wins.

Here’s a quick break down of how scoring works. For each level in cheerleading there are different skills that you are allowed to do that gets you into a certain scoring range. Cheerleading has 6 different levels and what is considered difficult in level 1 is not the same difficulty in level 3. Because there are different skills, there is a scoring grid that will let you know what criteria to meet to score in the highest range. This goes for tumbling (running and standing), pyramids, jumps, and stunts. So for any given category in any level you have to do a certain skill in order to obtain a high score. Any USASF score sheet has a skills grid to help the head judge place teams in the correct range. The panel judge then uses their expertise to score the team in the RANGE the head judge gave them. So there is no way that a level 3 team can do a level 1 skill and get scored in a 9-10 (out of 10) range. Or another example, a level 1 squad that does all cartwheels will not be in the same range as a level 1 squad that does back walkovers; same level, different levels of difficulty.

ANYWHO…I go up to one of the workers/volunteers of the competition and ask her if there was a process to contest scores. She said I could let her know my issue, she would talk to the head judge and then she would let me know the outcome. I told her my situation of how our youth team has 4 difficult level appropriate structures in their pyramid and our mini team has 1 average level appropriate structure in their pyramid and yet they were both scored the EXACT same in difficulty. Just as I explained earlier, there is a grid to put certain skills in a range, and 4 structures vs. 1 structure already puts the two pyramids in different ranges. I explained the situation to her, she went to talk to the head judge and he looked at my score sheet, told her “I remember that routine and I stand firm in what my judges scored” and left it at that. When the girl came back she informed me of what the head judge said and I told her I wanted to speak with him.  I wasn’t upset, I just wanted a better understanding and because the worker/volunteer didn’t know much or anything about cheer I wanted to talk to the judge one on one to get a better explanation.

So on to our conversation. About an hour and some change after my initial interaction with the worker/volunteer about my scores, I was finally able to talk to the head judge. I’m going to try to just recreate the entire conversation verbatim.

Me: Hi! My name is Cherita. *In a very chipper voice*

Judge: Hi, I’m Luis.

Me: I just had a few questions about my score sheet. I noticed that on my pyramid difficulty I received a 4 and my minis…

Judge: We’re not comparing.

Me: Ooohkay. *deep breath* Well in this instance I need to compare because it has to do with difficulty.

Judge: What is the issue?

Me: Well in my pyramid I start with show and goes…

Judge: Those are transitional skills.

Me: And they end in preps and on the outsides I have tic-tocs…

Judge: Which are also transitional skills.

Me: Not when they end in a heel stretch.

Judge: So how many structures do you have in your pyramid?

Me: I’m the coach, not the choreographer.

Judge: It doesn’t matter, you should know these things.

Me: Four, I have four structures in my pyramid, which should put me in a high range. Speaking of ranges, are you using a grid?

Judge: We’re using the varsity score sheet, you can look it

Me: I’m also a judge, so I know the score sheet, I don’t need to look it up. That’s not my question, I’m wondering if you’re using any kind of grid or range.

Judge: Look online.

Me: You’re not listening to what I have to say, and I don’t appreciate how you’re talking to me right now.

Judge: What’s the issue?

Me: My concern is how I’m in the same range as my mini team? I’m not comparing my team to another program, this is program to program comparing because it’s not consistent.

Judge: What is their pyramid?

Me: I know they have a lib to lib tic toc and that’s it.

Judge: So they only have one structure?

Me: I’m not their coach.

Judge: You should still know these things.

Me: No, I shouldn’t it’s not my team, it’s not my routine.

Judge: I don’t have time to ask my panel judge why they scored the way they did. Here. (handing me my score sheets back).

Me: *looks*

Judge: Do you want these or not?

Me: I’ll take them back, but I don’t understand why you’re acting the way you are. How can you call yourself a judge if you can’t justify anything you’re telling me.

Judge: WHAT PROGRAM ARE YOU FROM?

Me: And on that note, this conversation is over. *Drops mic, walks away*

As I’m walking away I can hear him yelling and screaming trying to figure out what program I’m from. Why? I feel threatened. Why does he need to know what program I’m from? I’ll give you my name, e-mail address, phone number, twitter handle, but you don’t need to take your immature actions out on my program. Mind you not once did I raise my voice or use a condescending tone with him. He was interrupting every sentence, he assumed I didn’t know what I was talking about. I was very professional and I don’t know if he felt threatened because I was questioning his judging, but the only thing I can think of is he thought I was some young dumb cheerleader volunteer who knew nothing. He had no legitimate answers for my valid questions.

So now my blood is BOILING, just reliving this moment makes my stomach hurt. I call my owner and let her know the situation and she plus another coach from my same program and one of my best friends from a DIFFERENT program come over because he saw that I was frustrated (to say the least). I’m telling them what just happened and I can see Luis talking to another lady who I guess is in charge of the competition. She comes over and I calmly tell her what happened and my situation about the judging. I also let her know that I didn’t appreciate the way he started talking to me and how he was rude from jump. She goes back to him, I see them talking, they come back together and all of a sudden “he understand where I’m coming from.” Is it because the other lady explained to him what I meant or was it because I had 3 extra people with me? Either way, I still was not happy with this man who claimed to be on the USASF board.

So now I’m asking him the same questions as before and I have my friends and owner also asking the same questions, because like I said before, I was just trying to get answers. I wasn’t debating numbers, I was trying to figure out the consistency. So finally my friend asked if the scoring was comparative at all. Meaning, are we comparing to a grid? Are we comparing to what we think a perfect routin is? And the answer we got was “no, this score sheet is all discretionary”. Soooo…then this isn’t judging, this is picking and choosing. Cool. Well, I got my answer. My answer was that this was not a competition that was being judged fairly or by any standards.

I know I’ve rambled and rambled on, but this is really something that had to be experienced first hand to get the entire feeling. Hopefully I’ve explained well enough for YOU to understand how awful the judging was in this competition. There are some other points about their judging I want to highlight.

• The company didn’t provide spotters, and one team used their own spotters for their TINY team, and was deducted 10 points.
• On their HIP-HOP dance score sheet, there was an area for leaps and turns, and one judge wrote “add leaps and turns”. Ummm…there is never a criteria for leaps and turns in a hip-hop routine.
• My minis scored a 5/5 in MOTION TECHNIQUE. I don’t care if you are Mini Cheer Athletics Wildcats, Mini Cali Coed, Mini Brandon Senior Black…there is not one mini team in the history of life that earns a 5/5 in motion technique.
• I was also told that they were not allowed to tell their panel judges to change their scores because there wasn’t a head judge setting ranges.

I’m pretty sure that’s most of nonsense I remember. This blog is to enlighten coaches, gym owners and USASF about what is being put out in the cheer world.

Share and comment! Thanks for reading!

Twitter: cheer_ology

E-mail: cherita.cheerology@gmail.com

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Hit Cheer and Dance

I’m not the biggest complainer in the world, but when something is blatantly wrong and it has to do with something I’m passionate about, EVERYBODY will hear about it. I recently experienced the worst cheerleading competition in the entire world. It was a small and new organization, which one would expect things not be perfect, but nothing like what went down. So much happened in the two days I was there, I don’t even know where or how to begin. I guess I’ll just start from the beginning.

DAY ONE:
We were told the competition was going to be held on the beach at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. When we arrived, the main floor was STILL being built in a parking lot across the street from the Boardwalk. Okay, so it’s in a parking lot, whatever, no big deal, that’s something we would have to personally get over. However, the fact that the floor was STILL BEING BUILT at 9:30 in the morning when the first team was scheduled to go on at 11:00, is an issue.

Fast forward to 11:00. The floor is finished, done poorly with a bunch of visible air pockets and bubbles sporadically throughout the floor and we still don’t have a warmup area. People are trying to understand what the holdup was and there was word floating around that the competition wasn’t going to start until 12:00. This hasn’t been announced to the audience by any person “working” the competition. I use the word working in quotations because everyone wearing an event t-shirt was supposedly a volunteer. You would ask anyone of them in a shirt ANY question and their answer was “I don’t know, I’m just a volunteer.” How is that acceptable? We didn’t know who was in charge of anything.

Fast forward to 12:00, the new competition start time. By this time, word was floating around that we were waiting for the judge(s) whose flight just landed in San Jose and it would be another hour before we would start. Mind you, none of this has been announced to anyone! So finally a young gal gets on the mic and says we’re going to have fun and do a jump off. Why? We don’t know why we’re stalling, but the kids were all for it, so let’s do it. The jump off was slightly entertaining and killed a little bit of time, so I guess it wasn’t a total bust. But then we went back to the waiting game.

Fast forward to 1:00, the new NEW competition start time. The same young gal gets on the mic and says “I have an announcement that will make you all VERY happy”. She said that team ABC and XYZ were going to warm up and perform and THEN we were going to take a 30 minute break to get organized. Ummm…WHY is that going to make us happy? We’re already 2 hours behind schedule, it’s hot, and the kids haven’t eaten since about 9 in the morning because we kept getting the runaround about when we were going to start. By this time everybody is done, but we don’t want to upset the kids, and we just want to compete. We still don’t know anything about the “judges” that are coming from San Jose. All I know is that when the first team finally went on, the judges were all people that had been there since the morning.
Fast forward to when the competition FINALLY started around 1:30; two and a half hours AFTER it was scheduled to begin. There was only one judging panel and the judges are scoring by pen and paper, so there was a lot of time in between teams performing. During the stalls, the same young gal on the mic, thought it would be a good idea to play games or interview the athletes during the stalls BEFORE they performed. At this point, nobody wants that, and I had to let her know. Before one of our teams went on I told her that nobody wanted to talk and nobody wanted to play games, they just wanted to compete. We had teams that had been at the competition for over 3 hours waiting to compete and were ready to go, so we started sticking our teams in randomly at any time. We told the people volunteering at the competition that we had warmed up and were ready to perform and they let us.

There are a few moments that I would like specifically talk about:

• The owner of a gym asked one of the volunteers where the on deck location was and the answer she got was “umm you can just stand somewhere in that vicinity”.
• Another coach asked where the athletes were to enter the stage and she said “umm wherever”.
• The excess floor pieces were laying around the competition area, not covered up or anything.
• There were no directions as to where to enter the competition floor, where to exit the competition floor, or ANYTHING.
• There wasn’t anybody directing us through the “warmup” area.
• A coach/owner had to fix the main floor before anyone went to compete because of all the visibly unsafe holes and bubbles in the floor.
• The microphone etiquette was off the hook. “Up next we have team 123. Oh wait, they’re not next, they’re on deck deck deck.”
• Another example of microphone etiquette: “Team 321 you should be in warmups. Go now!”
  THIS WAS ONLY DAY ONE!

DAY TWO:

---

It’s a new, day, let’s start fresh. The night of day 1, all coaches received an e-mail with the schedule of day 2 and their score sheets. If you’ve read my NCA Judges ARE Fair blog, you know I’m all about defending judges, but when I got my results, I KNEW there was an issue. I will write a separate blog about the judging and my experience talking to the “head/rules” judge because it was THAT bad.

Anyways. Day 2, I’m due to show up at 10:30, the first team is scheduled to perform at 10. I get there are 10:30 and TEAMS ARE PERFORMING! Yes, they started 15 minutes late, but it sure is a hell of a lot better than 2.5 hours late! There’s no more stall talking on the microphone. They’re letting music play during the stalls. There’s someone on the microphone announcing which teams are on deck. There’s an actual on deck area that’s been sectioned off. It’s 1 MILLION times better than the day before. But because there is only one judging panel, and there wasn’t time in the schedule to accommodate this issue, they slowly got off schedule. Apparently there were changes in the schedule, but it wasn’t announced (shockingly) so there was still a bit of confusion as to who was supposed to be warming up and whatnot.
On top of everything, some teams brought their prep teams and they were only competing one day (which was full year teams day 2), and this was their first experience with the company. They knew that it wasn’t organized well, but luckily for the company, this is all they were experiencing. The same coach/owner that had to fix the mat the first day, had to fix the mats the second day. Their “USASF” approved judges were dressed in sweats and t-shirts. Yes, they improved from Day 1, but they were still sloppy.
Awards time:

For awards, a lady who you can tell knows nothing about cheer, says that they’re only announcing first place teams. They don’t even acknowledge the other teams in the divisions. Mind you, there are MAYBE 4 teams at MOST in each division. It’s not going to waste any more time that has already been wasted to just ACKNOWLEDGE the teams that performed. So rude. So all the teams who won got a banner, a spirit stick and a National Champion Jacket. I’m grateful for my win…buuuuuuut, I did NOT receive a jacket. I got a National Champion zip up hoodie sweatshirt. I’m afraid to wash it, because if I do, I’m sure the logo will fall off. There were so many promises that this company offered that weren’t met. A lot of false advertisement.
One of the parents of my program asked why we weren’t on the beach and a volunteer or staff member of this company said that it had been double booked (which isn’t our fault) and then the same parent asked a Boardwalk worker why the beach stage had been double booked and the worker proceeded to tell her that the stage is ONLY up during spring break and the summer time, which is neither for us right now. So why the lies? Why not just own up to what really happened?
Back to awards. So after the first awards and no other teams were announced, I know for a fact that they received an earful from parents. There were tiny and mini teams whose names were not called because they didn’t win. Such a heart breaker. So the second awards they called all the teams and the second place teams received ONE medal (not one per athlete) ONE single medal, and then the participants got headphones attached to a lanyard. This is supposed to be a NATIONALS.
I’ve never been so ashamed, embarrassed, and angry about my sport until now. I’ve never been to such a poorly organized event of any kind. I want this and my upcoming blog about their judging to get to the owner of this company and to USASF since this was an event sanctioned by USASF and they had board members representing this company.

I can only imagine the loads of e-mails and complaints this company is going to have about this competition. I sure do hope they’re ready to dish out tons of refunds. This is really just the short end of what happened, everything happened so fast it was hard to keep up with it all. If you have anything else to add, you can leave comments below. Thank you for reading and please please please share this post!

Cheer vs. Gymnastics

I grew up as a gymnast and then transitioned into a cheerleader. It was easy for me to jump into the cheer world because I had 10+ years experience in tumbling. In the cheer world it’s factually known that “you can teach anyone to stunt, but you can’t teach anyone to tumble”. While this is true, tumbling is now a significant skill in cheerleading and whatever level you stunt, should be the same level you tumble. 

In women’s gymnastics there are four apparatuses, vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercise. I’m not sure if most are aware, but no matter how talented and skilled you are in one event, you are not allowed to move up to the next level until you score out at a competition, showing that you are ready for the next level. Just because you can do a cartwheel on the beam, but you can’t do a back handspring on the floor, doesn’t make you ready for level 6. Gymnastics is an all around sport (until college) and cheerleading should be treated the same. How do I think this should be regulated? I’ll tell you. 

Just like in gymnastics, when a new athlete enters into a cheer gym, they need to be assessed. Not just on tumbling, but strength, stunts, and jumps. I understand that there may not be a “perfect” level for everybody at the gym that they feel most at home, but an athlete needs to be placed on a level in accordance with their tumbling (for the most part) and age. If you have a child who is 7 and can be held in a stunt by a bunch of strong 11 year olds but can’t do a tuck does not mean she needs to be on a youth 4. She needs to be on a mini or youth 1 or 2 depending on her tumbling. I’m sorry to break it to you, but stunting is not all cheerleading is about. 

Sorry, I got off track. But the main point that I’m getting to, is there needs to be a skill sheet that all athletes need to pass in order to move up to the next level. Especially with the younger athletes. I believe that if you are a level 3 athlete you should be able to stunt AND tumble level 3. Gymnasts don’t get to go to a competition and tell the judges “hey, I’m going to compete level 9 on floor, level 7 on beam, and level 6 on vault and bars”. It doesn’t work like that. Yes, individuals will have their weaker events, but they just work that much harder to make sure they can compete at the level they are meant to compete at. I understand that cheerleading is a team sport, but these athletes are pushing to get to a level 5 team, and then what? They’re 11 and a level 5 cheerleader…now they have 7 years to perfect a level they should have perfected already. If they slow down and learn the basics to every element in cheer, once they get to the level 5 division, injuries will dwindle and the athletes who don’t want to take the time and effort to become excellent will be eliminated. 

It’s okay to be 10 years old and on a youth 2 team for 2 years. The goal isn’t to move up a level each year. The goal is to learn and progress. It’s also okay to stay in a level for an extra year because there isn’t a level at your gym that fits your needs. Have you ever competed on a team where there was no stress or pressure? It’s kind of fun. Oh and another random thought; I’ve never had a mental block, so I could be wrong, but I think progression would take away majority of the “mental blocks” that are very common in cheerleading.

A skill sheet, along with a universal scoring system will not only help with keeping cheerleading more conformable, but it will also better the chances of cheerleading becoming a sport.  

Thanks for reading! 

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Progressive Cheerleading

Everybody always wants to be the best in anything they do. It’s rare that people want to put in the hard work AND time it takes to be the best. 

Of course when you watch a team such as Top Gun Large Coed, Brandon Senior Black, or Team Bangkok and you think “oh that looks so easy, I could totally do that”. Well, professionals are supposed to make their art look easy. I watch baseball pitchers in awe over how fast they can throw the ball. I’m sure I can throw the ball 5 maybe 6 miles per hour. But I realize that dedication and a lot of practice and training is probably what got that person to where they they are today. 

Just like most things in life, cheerleading is progressive based. What do I mean by progressive? I’ll explain. You know the phrase “you have to crawl before you walk”? Well as a parent, I know that not all babies walk at the same time and some babies don’t even crawl, but we can all agree, it’s a process. A baby has to become strong enough to hold its head up, and then has to have enough core strength to sit up, and eventually make his or her way to a standing position. After a baby has mastered standing, the walking becomes trial and error. Knowing how to move their legs in a certain way, learning how to keep balance, it’s all in the process of learning how to walk, whether you realize it or not. 

How does this relate to cheerleading? I’m glad you asked. Let’s start with tumbling. Tumbling in cheerleading has evolved dramatically over the last 5-7 years, but unfortunately what hasn’t evolved is the knowledge of tumbling. “Tumbling coaches” have been known to start out their athletes by teaching them back handsprings on within their first few lessons of classes which is both wrong and dangerous. One of the very first skills to be taught to any given athlete should be a forward roll. And not just flipping your torso over your head, but a correct forward roll.  Starting with your arms by your ears, keeping your legs together and standing up without the use of arms. Technique will always win over skill. 

The most useful skill in tumbling is the handstand. The reason why? A handstand is in a cartwheel, roundoff, back handspring, front handspring…I think you see where I’m going here. Just because you can kind of do a handstand and a janky cartwheel doesn’t mean you’re ready to move on to the next skill. Think of it like this, just because your child knows how to count to 10 doesn’t mean they know had to add and subtract. Right? I see parents and some coaches push their athletes hard to learn tumbling skills that they are not physically ready for. This is what leads to unnecessary injuries. Not only are athletes not ready due to lack of basic skills, but they also are not strong enough to do the elite skills. I’ve seen athletes who are attempting to do all these hard head over heel skills with absolutely no core strength whatsoever. Every athlete who attempts a back handspring should be able to hold a hollow body position for a minute. If we were not such a rush rush or comparative society, people would have no problem spending 2-3 hours OUTSIDE of practice, stretch, conditioning, taking private lessons to ensure they are safely and accurately progressing on their skills. 

Parents: Just because 5 year old “Mary” has a back handspring doesn’t mean your 11 year old “Sally” should have one. Take care of your athletes and let them progress at their own speed. 

Last and final thought. Think about the most powerful tumblers in our industry today…Angel Rice, Taryn Burke, Ashley Eichelberger, Jack Payne, Brandon Wu, AJ Singleton, Whitney Love and a plethora of others and I guarantee you they have one of a few things in common. They’re really hard workers, they started tumbling from the basics, they are very strong and conditioned, or they’re naturally talented. The naturally talented come few and far between, but those people either work hard and continue, or stay content and never grow as an athlete.
There is so much that I could cover about progression in the cheer world, but bottom line, you will not succeed if you do not take the steps needed to make a great athlete. 

 Thanks for reading! Follow me on twitter: @cheer_ology and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cheerology. 

NCA Judges ARE fair!

Yes, I said it, and I will continue to stand by my word. As many of you know, the biggest Nationals in the nation happened this past weekend. If you happened to be on any form of social media, I’m sure you read the plethora of ignorant comments about how awful the judges are and how this sport is rigged. Let’s set one thing straight, just because you WANTED a team to win doesn’t mean they DESERVED to win. Whichever team won, won. Point. Blank. Period.

And who’s to say whether a team deserved to win or not? Those athletes worked SO incredibly hard to accomplish what they did. For you to take that away from them is rude and hurtful. How would you feel if you won worlds and you have a bunch of people saying another team deserved it? Of course you didn’t think of it that way. 

 For those of you who think the judges watch the routine and look at the team name on the uniform and whisper into the announcers ear who they THINK should win, have it allllll wrong. Anyone who thinks judges are biased are the people who would judge unfairly. Judges are professional, and there isn’t just ONE judge. I’ll give you a judging 101 lesson real quick. 

 There are usually 4 different types of judges at any given competition. The head judge, panel judge, rules judge, and deductions judge. Not one of these judges knows 100% what place any team is in due to how much goes into judging. If you’re still confused, I’ll explain a little further. 

 
Head Judge – This judge watches the routine and places the team into a specifc range based on what is put out on the floor. They don’t care how good or bad the skills are performed, they just need to know how many people or groups did the level (or non level) appropriate skills and places them in a range. It’s great that you have a standing back handpring, but if you’re in level 4 or 5, you’re not going to score as high as a team doing standing tucks, no matter how crappy they are.

 

Panel Judge – This judge is the one who gives the point scores. This is the judge who tells you what you need to improve on, and how you can score higher in the range that you are in. This judge can’t score any higher or lower than the range the head judge gives them. 

 
Rules Judge – This judge is watching for illegal stunts, tumbling, etc. Throughout the routine. This judge knows the levels and knows what is appropriate for each level.

 

Deductions Judge – This judge is watching for falls, touchdowns, bobbles, etc. This judge could care less that you did a double up, if you bobble or fall doing the double up, it’s a deduction. 

        Hopefully that clears things up. 

 People were SO upset that Top Gun won after they had 2 falls on day 2. I’m not sure if you watched day 1, but they hit day 1. Day 1 does mean something. They didn’t win by a lot, but because they did what they were supposed to do day 1, and they had a high raw score, that left room for error. I’m not saying everyone has to go out and try and throw extremely hard skills and fall because you will score higher, but they were good at the skills that they did and probably scored relatively high in execution.

Since everyone thinks the judges have it wrong because Cheetahs hit day 2 and OBVIOUSLY should have won…what about ACE Cheer Company? They hit zero deductions BOTH days and still got 4th. Why isn’t anyone complaining about that? Riddle me that one? Oh, probably because their RAW score didn’t match up to the teams ahead of them. But there’s NO WAY that a team could have dropped and won. With that theory all teams who hit should win. Every team in level 5 should do straight up libs as their elite, round-off back hanspring tucks as their tumbling pass, and single toe-touch to tuck as their jump sequence. It’s clean, it hits.

To make you feel more like cookie crumbs, what about this question…why isn’t anyone arguing about the placements of the special athlete division? Probably because you have no business judging them. They’re out there having a good time, and doing what they love! No difference between them and the worlds divisions. 

I’ve been hit with the “cheer is a subjective sport” crap. Guess what else is subjective? Gymnastics, ice-skating, diving, any sport that has a judge and not a referee. But for some reason, everyone involved in cheer thinks they are a judge because they prefer one team over the other. And this is one reason why cheer will NEVER be recognized as a sport. Parents, coaches, and athletes always have to put the blame on SOMEONE for why their team didn’t win. Nothing is ever fair in cheer. It’s all about the team name. If the issue is that bad, do something about it. Be the voice. Find out which judges are playing favorites. Stop complaining or stop cheering. I guarantee the same people who are complaining about “bad judging” are the SAME ones who are going to order the live stream of NCA next year and the year after that. 

 If we could come together as a cheer community, and not bash athletes, coaches, judges, whomever and become more family like, we will be able to weed out the fakes and phonies who like to have someone to blame all the time. Let’s stand up for our sport. Let’s make a difference and show everyone WHY we love our sport. 

 #rantover

Educational Cheerleading

I love everything about cheerleading and my goal in life is to make everyone that is a part of cheerleading, understand what it is all about. I want people to understand the athleticism, the politics, the music, the everything. I don’t know EVERYTHING about cheerleading, but I know a lot. I want to be an educator about the “sport” that I grew to love. The only reason I put sport in quotations is because it’s not considered a sport. Stay tuned for my blog and podcast about that topic!

I just spent over 77 hours in a span of 3 days judging almost 1,000 cheerleading teams. Most people would consider that stressful, boring, hard, or some other negative synonym to the aforementioned words, but I enjoyed every minute of it. I got to meet people who are just as passionate about cheerleading as I am and who can teach me as I go along.

Cheerleading is definitely part of my DNA, and as long as I can educate people whether it be by a blog, a podcast, or a presentation in front of a crowd, I will do it.

Anyone who is interested can check out the few podcasts I do have at cheerology.podomatic.com or follow me on Twitter at cheer_ology.

P.S. This is what a cheer hangover does to you.