All-Star Open Team Expectations

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It might be different in Canada, but in the US it is now expected that the vast majority of kids go to college immediately following high school. I graduated from a standard public school (it was good, but by no means great) with roughly 300 in my class and I can only think of one person who didn't attend a college of some sort the fall after graduation. I think it is probably even more so expected of most competitive cheerleaders because they are typically from a middle to upper-middle class upbringing and above average students. A bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma here


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Thats so bizarre to me! I did 2 years of university, quit, and work quite successfully with a good salary now FOR the university I dropped out from. It's not uncommon for people to not attend university.
 
It might be different in Canada, but in the US it is now expected that the vast majority of kids go to college immediately following high school. I graduated from a standard public school (it was good, but by no means great) with roughly 300 in my class and I can only think of one person who didn't attend a college of some sort the fall after graduation. I think it is probably even more so expected of most competitive cheerleaders because they are typically from a middle to upper-middle class upbringing and above average students. A bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma here


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I wouldn't say I've noticed it's different, as most people in my high school ended up going to college or university and there was a vast majority that were not too far above the poverty line, I just think that college/university cheer is less appealing here. On my team, there are only 5 or 6 of us who are still post-secondary age, most are late 20s/early 30s, but those of us that do go to post-secondary laugh at college/university cheerleading. There are MAYBE 4 teams in this whole country that could even come close to standing up to Worlds level allstar cheerleading, and saying 4 is a stretch, realistically, there's only 2 universities that I would say are appealing, but a lot of it is to do with the lack of quality allstar gyms in those cities for open athletes.
 
As far as I know, the only International teams that dont pay in Calif is Stealth. (They are the best one too.) The ones I know about pay about $250 a month. All I know is it is so hard to keep a team together for a whole season. We just had FORCE have to get a new bid because of so many roster changes and thats a very popular gym, I know PCM had openings very recently and Cali didnt have an Int Coed team this year.

Soap Box: No one has to respond...It really annoys me when people say its okay that only the top 3 go to finals at Worlds cuz it's its easy for the US to field Int teams, cuz out on the West Coast, it's the MOST difficult. When CP was on a Co-Ed, they had a new roster at every competition.
 
As far as I know, the only International teams that dont pay in Calif is Stealth. (They are the best one too.) The ones I know about pay about $250 a month. All I know is it is so hard to keep a team together for a whole season. We just had FORCE have to get a new bid because of so many roster changes and thats a very popular gym, I know PCM had openings very recently and Cali didnt have an Int Coed team this year.

Soap Box: No one has to respond...It really annoys me when people say its okay that only the top 3 go to finals at Worlds cuz it's its easy for the US to field Int teams, cuz out on the West Coast, it's the MOST difficult. When CP was on a Co-Ed, they had a new roster at every competition.

$250 a month seems like a lot... At my gym, the guys don't pay tuition (from what I hear this is fairly common in Canada as it's hard to keep guys), so our cost without Worlds ran somewhere between 4-500 this year and I doubt we would have had a coed team if the cost was any higher, even the $400 (for the year) was an issue for some people it seemed.
 
Thats so bizarre to me! I did 2 years of university, quit, and work quite successfully with a good salary now FOR the university I dropped out from. It's not uncommon for people to not attend university.

Another reason I want to move to Canada. Pretty much everyone here HAS to get at minimum a 4 year degree, before you can make anything considered a good salary and those college loans are pretty hefty
 
$250 a month seems like a lot... At my gym, the guys don't pay tuition (from what I hear this is fairly common in Canada as it's hard to keep guys), so our cost without Worlds ran somewhere between 4-500 this year and I doubt we would have had a coed team if the cost was any higher, even the $400 (for the year) was an issue for some people it seemed.

The guys do pay a reduced rate and there are those few amazing athletes that dont pay, but I paid $3000+ for my CP not including travel fees. Worlds was an additional $1000 including airfare from the West Coast to the East Coast (not including food, etc) and that included frundraising $. That's why the whole Worlds set up bugs me and didnt do it this year.
 
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It might be different in Canada, but in the US it is now expected that the vast majority of kids go to college immediately following high school. I graduated from a standard public school (it was good, but by no means great) with roughly 300 in my class and I can only think of one person who didn't attend a college of some sort the fall after graduation. I think it is probably even more so expected of most competitive cheerleaders because they are typically from a middle to upper-middle class upbringing and above average students. A bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma here


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This is a separate topic and unfortunately one that would go in random because it isn't cheer related, but, SOOOO true. The value of a college education has gone down significantly and is now, for some reason, 'required' to get blue collar jobs. I see one of the next big bubble bursts for our country being the deflation of value in college education.

It doesn't mean college wont be worth it, but means that paying 40K a year for a college education without a high ROI will no longer be worth it. I know this because my alma mater is actually preparing for this and focusses on ROI (How Do Schools Stack Up? graphics.wsj.com). The dot on the far right is ours.

Basically it is about investment. If the cost of money to borrow is MORE than how much you make from your eventual job then at some point people will realize it and stop paying all that money for your degree. We are anywhere between 5 and 10 years form this but many schools are in for a rude awakening.
 
Thats so bizarre to me! I did 2 years of university, quit, and work quite successfully with a good salary now FOR the university I dropped out from. It's not uncommon for people to not attend university.

I think over in Ontario (specifically GTA) it's a little bit of a different story. Although some people did not go to university or college right after grade 12, most of the people I know that stayed back a year only did so to help pay for college/university...It is getting increasingly difficult to find a job without a bachelor's degree (I mean hey, even McDonald's requires a high school diploma now). Although our tuition costs don't even come close to those in the US ($18,000 for tuition...yikes!)

As for open teams, I'm really struggling with whether I want to do open or university next year. As it was mentioned Canadian universities aren't really "cheer or die", although I like to think that my school is on the rise :p On an open team I'd be fully willing to pay for the experience i get, if I want to cheer I know i'll have to pay. I also know that the cost for open would be more than my university team, but for me open (in Canada at least) is a bigger draw than university cheer.
 
I don't pay tuition on my open team. We pay a choreo/music fee and for our comp fees - this year we only did two events in New England that were both bid comps, only one of them required a hotel stay, but no flights. Usually we pay for uniforms, but this year we gathered up enough old ones to hand out. We pay for our trip to worlds.

This year our coed team is coached by someone who is not the owner so he gets paid to coach us. We usually tack on $15-25 to our fees to help cover his cost.

I've been on open teams that charge tuition, but for once a week of practice time and only 2-3 comps a year, it really couldn't be more than 25-35/mo. And you'd still be chasing people down for that.

I cheered in college for 4 years and did open as well my last two years of that. I've been doing open teams since. I never did all-star before college.
 
I think over in Ontario (specifically GTA) it's a little bit of a different story. Although some people did not go to university or college right after grade 12, most of the people I know that stayed back a year only did so to help pay for college/university...It is getting increasingly difficult to find a job without a bachelor's degree (I mean hey, even McDonald's requires a high school diploma now). Although our tuition costs don't even come close to those in the US ($18,000 for tuition...yikes!)

As for open teams, I'm really struggling with whether I want to do open or university next year. As it was mentioned Canadian universities aren't really "cheer or die", although I like to think that my school is on the rise :p On an open team I'd be fully willing to pay for the experience i get, if I want to cheer I know i'll have to pay. I also know that the cost for open would be more than my university team, but for me open (in Canada at least) is a bigger draw than university cheer.

We have a lot of trades in Manitoba. It seems to be the thing now? Our government has been pushing them hard for the last few years and it seems to be paying off.

Our teams pay about $1000 for the year including our 1 travel competition. But we are not "worlds" ready. And you know what? We may never be, and thats okay with us. I was explaining to someone when I was away judging last weekend that we're not looking to go to worlds and they couldn't wrap their heads around it. How about just being active and having fun?
 
Im slightly shocked to hear that athletes dont pay for open team in the US. I've always known that University cheer is WAAAY bigger than Open cheer in the states than Canada, but that athletes dont pay? like what :s
I wish that I didn't have to pay for cheer once I'm on an open team, because even though yes, costs are reduced. With tuition+comps+worlds it all adds up and becomes very difficult while also paying for school. Although, from a gym owners perspective, why should they allow these athletes to cheer for free? Costing the gym money?
 
We have a lot of trades in Manitoba. It seems to be the thing now? Our government has been pushing them hard for the last few years and it seems to be paying off.

Our teams pay about $1000 for the year including our 1 travel competition. But we are not "worlds" ready. And you know what? We may never be, and thats okay with us. I was explaining to someone when I was away judging last weekend that we're not looking to go to worlds and they couldn't wrap their heads around it. How about just being active and having fun?

I did 3 years of open teams before I switched to my current gym. Their coed 6 team never went to worlds before and we happened to get a bid. That's our goal now every year, but it never bothered me or crossed my mind before that. I almost wish we did a beach travel comp instead of worlds - I'd have more time to layout than I do at Disney running around all over the place.

Im slightly shocked to hear that athletes dont pay for open team in the US. I've always known that University cheer is WAAAY bigger than Open cheer in the states than Canada, but that athletes dont pay? like what :s
I wish that I didn't have to pay for cheer once I'm on an open team, because even though yes, costs are reduced. With tuition+comps+worlds it all adds up and becomes very difficult while also paying for school. Although, from a gym owners perspective, why should they allow these athletes to cheer for free? Costing the gym money?

It's not that we don't pay - we just don't pay tuition. At least at my gym. Our owner has traditionally coached us and he doesn't get paid hourly anyway. At least on my team we pay for comps and worlds, but you still tend to lose money fronting someone money here or there, paying for everyone on the team to get registered with the USASF on time because you don't have all the money yet - adding a last minute person for worlds and footing their bill, etc.
 
This is a separate topic and unfortunately one that would go in random because it isn't cheer related, but, SOOOO true. The value of a college education has gone down significantly and is now, for some reason, 'required' to get blue collar jobs. I see one of the next big bubble bursts for our country being the deflation of value in college education.

It doesn't mean college wont be worth it, but means that paying 40K a year for a college education without a high ROI will no longer be worth it. I know this because my alma mater is actually preparing for this and focusses on ROI (How Do Schools Stack Up? graphics.wsj.com). The dot on the far right is ours.

Basically it is about investment. If the cost of money to borrow is MORE than how much you make from your eventual job then at some point people will realize it and stop paying all that money for your degree. We are anywhere between 5 and 10 years form this but many schools are in for a rude awakening.

That's because the community colleges realized that there was $$ in blue collar job degrees.
 
Open team - from a totally different perspective, adults all over the world pay to play recreational sports. Why shouldn't AS cheer be one of them.

Ill use tennis as an example, I pay for my weekly classes, a private lesson here and there, and pay play on a team. Tennis has the USTA, complete with athlete registration and an actual player rating. They even have senior and super senior divisions. I could go on, but the gist is yes people play recreationally (though it is very much a misnomer...some of these "recreational" players are the most competitive people.

My cousin is 30 and pays a bunch to play hockey.

I get that a cheer athlete has a different life span than other sports (a true "senior" team of 65+ anyone?) but I think it is totally reasonable to expect someone to pay to play.


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Im slightly shocked to hear that athletes dont pay for open team in the US. I've always known that University cheer is WAAAY bigger than Open cheer in the states than Canada, but that athletes dont pay? like what :s
I wish that I didn't have to pay for cheer once I'm on an open team, because even though yes, costs are reduced. With tuition+comps+worlds it all adds up and becomes very difficult while also paying for school. Although, from a gym owners perspective, why should they allow these athletes to cheer for free? Costing the gym money?

In most cases, it is to help make the Open team more attractive to the age group that would be fielded for the team. It is hard as it is to get kids to stay in a program after 17/18 (e.g. they graduate high school, move away to go to school or look for a full-time job, etc.)...A lot of kids who are passionate about cheering will most likely try out for their college team or give up cheering altogether once they age out of USASF.

Then you consider the age group (18+) and the financial situations most of them (us :D) are in. You're going to college - maybe even needing to work as much part-time as possible to pay for school stuff, might not have the backing of mom/dad as you did when you were still living under their roof as a teenager. Getting college-aged athletes to fork over tuition and competition fees (at my gym that's almost $300/mo!) is gonna be hard.

Considering this, and other factors, most open teams don't pay tuition because the gym is trying to make it more attractive for this type of athlete to join the team. If you're not necessarily in a college town, it's gonna be even harder to field this type of team.

I lived in Germany for a bit and was on what would be considered an open team here (it was Senior Allgirl Level 6 over there, but it would compete IO6 here). It was very much subsidized for everyone tuition was the equivalent of $12/mo. We only competed at 1-3 competitions a year, depending on how qualifiers went (Regionals -> Nationals, and an open competition). And for that, the registration fees for regionals and nationals is only $6.50/person (I know right!!!!). The open competition was more at around $40/person. Then we would have to pay for the bus to get to and from regionals at anywhere from $5-20/person (depending on how much the club financed)....definitely a different world over there! A lot of people in the club would complain about how expensive it was and when I told my mom she said "Heck, I would have given ANYTHING to get off with that amount when you cheered here!"
 
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