All-Star Standard Team Size: 24

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I would be curious to see the current team size distribution. Knowing the average isn't really enough to fairly judge the impact of shoving small and large into a single division. Are there a bunch of 36s and a bunch of 12s? My guess is that is harder for a team with 12 new athletes to add enough athletes to feel competitive than it would be for World Cup to move 12 Shooting Stars to another team. Again, without seeing the data it is hard to come up with a conclusion.

A separate point - are we concerned with continuing to develop a fan base to help attract new athletes to the sport? Fair or not, the larger teams tend to attract many more spectators and attention. I would be hesitant to ignore the relationship between team size and crowd size.

I'll see of I can get the distribution. Worse thing they can say is no, right.

The fan base isn't a concern I've put much thought into. My experience is former cheerleaders becoming fans, not former fans becoming cheerleaders. The biggest drum I've beat the past couple years is increasing the average number of teams to someplace north of 8, from the 3.25 it was last time I counted.
 
Thank you.

You left off teams of 20 going to 24 (or 19 going to 23 for those of you that attend Jammy events and realized that really helps your ratios). I believe more teams will be put in a position to to add up to 20% than reduce 20%.

The year I first officially proposed this the average size of a team attending NCA ASN was 23.2 or 23.8, so on average these teams wouldn't feel the impact of the things you noted. These gyms could have the same total number of kids on the same number of teams. NCA could have the same number of performances, judges, etc.

Mega gyms probably would feel a negative impact if this were to come to fruition, but they became mega gyms due in part to being able to adapt to change so I don't think it would be something that would cause sleepless nights in the long term.

Of course, I've been wrong before.

Smaller gym, I doubt, typically choose to only have 10-18 on a team, they have that many on the team because they have that many kids of a similar age and ability level. 24 either forces them to compete against teams twice their size or to move up subpar kids or sandbag at a lower level to fill a team.

While at a gym like cheer athletics, when they have to move 8-12 kids down off of a lot of their teams, a kid would conceivably need a back handspring to make a level 1 team there.

If I had the numbers for it I would make all of my teams have 28+ kids on the teams, but instead I have 2 with 25, 3 with 16 and 1 with 14
 
Smaller gym, I doubt, typically choose to only have 10-18 on a team, they have that many on the team because they have that many kids of a similar age and ability level. 24 either forces them to compete against teams twice their size or to move up subpar kids or sandbag at a lower level to fill a team.

... which is part of why I think moving everything to 24 would not be good for smaller gyms either. Their 12-14 member teams are now competing against even larger teams than they were before (20 vs 24) - that are likely much more stacked than ever before.

The biggest drum I've beat the past couple years is increasing the average number of teams to someplace north of 8, from the 3.25 it was last time I counted.

Another way to fix that would be to forcibly cut back the number of events that EPs are allowed to host per year. Fewer events would mean more teams per division. (Fewer events would also open things up for smaller event producers to step in and get a bigger share of those teams out there.) I'm guessing that the big EPs (Varsity/Jam) would view the same way that many gyms view cutting back the number on each team.

(I'm not in favor of that, just using it as an example.)
 
Another way to fix that would be to forcibly cut back the number of events that EPs are allowed to host per year. Fewer events would mean more teams per division. (Fewer events would also open things up for smaller event producers to step in and get a bigger share of those teams out there.) I'm guessing that the big EPs (Varsity/Jam) would view the same way that many gyms view cutting back the number on each team.

(I'm not in favor of that, just using it as an example.)

I think I have a better chance of getting ALL of the mega gym owners to agree to 24 than getting ANY of the EPs to agree to cutting back events.

Plus if smaller EPs are allowed to add events as replacements we're in the same spot.
 
No apology needed. I had to re-read it myself to make sure it came out as I pictured it.

The best scenario is one that causes no pain or discomfort to anyone. The next best is discomfort for those that can handle it. I think 24 falls in that range and the mega gyms have shown they can handle the most.

I would suggest that the best scenario is one that causes the most net gain (or least net loss) to the industry. A change that causes me to let 5 coaches go is not necessarily "better" or less painful than a small gym with 3 coaches going out of business. CA probably wouldn't be shutting its doors, but there would still be people losing their jobs (and potentially their careers, houses, etc.) USASF shouldn't be in the business of deciding which set of coaches is worth more than the other.

I am open to exploring nearly any idea, but my gut tells me that it is a significant net overall negative. I am certainly not always right.

If there are ways to increase the total amount of net athletes (by extension - jobs) in the industry - that should be the goal, IMO.
 
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I started this topic and then while in Canada I missed this whole thing. Whoops.

There is quite a few things I think making a standard size would help.

First I want to standardize ALL the divisions in every part of cheer to one size. Allstar, High school, College, International, Rec... everything. In standardizing the size I think we will create a system that will standardize how everyone approaches a routine. People hear standardization in cheerleading and then everyone gets up in arms that I mean make all the routines look the same. But in reality 'creativity comes from a box'. By standardizing team size we are going to allow the same 'Best Practices' on how to create teams and routines. People can become more position players earlier. You will actually see the difficulty of routines and skills INCREASE when you standardize the size.

Second, I do understand mega gyms have the absolute best economy of scale. Yes, 36 people on a team makes cost per person better than 24. But as there is little standardization in prices because of the sheer amount of difference types of cheer I believe standardizing would actually help bring costs down. A big picture investment where we will see the effects of this down the road in a few years (kinda like how investing money in libraries now is cheaper than paying for illiteracy later).

Third, scoring / safety. Right now every coach has to be able to handle so many different variables to know how to properly coach a team. To be honest a lot of coaches struggle because they have to abstract so much from the winning teams to apply to their team which has a completely different set of variables. This causes them to make very poor decisions that actually don't do anything to help their cause. What is worse when they incorrectly identify certain attributes to the winners (whether they or someone else won) and we have post hoc ergo propter hoc. By having more standardization we will allow more teams to approach routines with a lot more structure and safety. As well the scoring can be more standardized for the same reasons (as well as hopefully lead to us to our objective post routine difficulty by video scoring and subjective live execution and performance scoring).
 
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