The thing is, the judges/scoresheet doesn't care that Susie has a mental block or whatever the case may be. It's a numbers game. My loyalty will be to the team. My job is to make sure the team has the absolute best chance of performing their best routine that fits the scoresheet.
What about kids that just don't have the appropriate level tumbling? I hear so often parents say they're child is a level 3 athlete because of their tumbling. However same child isn't in stunts cause they are not reliable in any of the positions. Why is so much weight put on tumbling? Yet stunts which seem to account for more points are viewed like anyone can do them? Which is definitely not the case.
Because tumbling is an individual skill, and it generally takes longer to attain tumbling skills than stunting skills.
Totally agree, I think anyone could be a level 5 stunter if they work at it long enough. I don't think anyone could become a level 5 tumbler. Coming from someone who barely qualifies as a level 5 tumbler, the stunting aspect of level 5 was far easier.
I get that. I guess I just see the short term. We've had to pull up 2 lower level athletes to help our stunts because a few of the kids struggled basing. Then the parents got frustrated that these lower level athletes were tainting the team. It's just hard to see parents become elitist. I don't care if someone doesn't have all the skills if the coach needs them on the team the parents shouldn't be putting them down. One of the athletes overheard a parent complaining about their lack of tumbling it was devastating for the girl. Especially since she was so excited to be asked to cross over. It just breaks my heart to see kids being treated that way by adults who know better.
That makes sense. although in your scenario the coach is doing what is best for the team. The parent would be doing what is best for that athlete. I think as a parent you need to decide do you want your child to learn about selfishness or selflessness? I don't mean selfishness is necessarily a bad thing I think there are great benefits to being selfish in certain scenarios but there's also a great lesson to learn about taking one for the team/being a team player. It's not always so easy to decide which is best especially when emotions are involved.
I definitely didn't mean to imply that tumbling was the only thing that mattered! If your stunting isn't up to par I think that's just as bad. There's only so much space you can set aside on a team for pure tumblers. In an ideal world, you have the tumbling and the stunting for your level.
But in a scenario like this the coaches knew what the skills were all along and made the choice for that specific team to have that athlete join the team. It's not like they lost skills, it's just that somebody better came in. I'm all for the better of a team but just because something shiny and new walks in doesn't mean you toss out what you already had, you work with what you have instead of discard. It's one thing if they lost their skills and aren't performing at that level anymore, but it's another when they are and just aren't the new flavour of the month. The last time I checked cheer wasn't determined by a bell curve.
I totally agree. I taught my kids to finish what you started you signed up to be part of a team you finish out that year/season with the team and then you are free to move on. I guess I instilled this too well in my daughter, had an athlete on her team quit the week before their 1st. comp. and my daughter was friends with this girl and she hasn't spoken to her since. She feels that it was a terrible thing that she did and the girls' reason for quitting was that she just didn't want to cheer anymore.
