Crazy ideas for improving the all-star industry

[ffamilyguy]

I have a great idea....let the advisery board members be made up of small gym owners. That way when there is a new rule or level change, etc. the small gyms can hear about it first rather then 1 or 2 months down the road.

Oh, and I like the idea of having Worlds travel around the world each year. If our team lived in Florida we would be at worlds every year....but since our town and parents aren't rich...we have to get a paid bid to go.

 

[BlueCat]

I have a great idea....let the advisery board members be made up of small gym owners. That way when there is a new rule or level change, etc. the small gyms can hear about it first rather then 1 or 2 months down the road.

Which advisory board are you talking about? The National Advisory Board? The Board of Directors? By "made up of" do you mean "include" or "consist entirely of"?

I would suggest rather than saying "we need to put a small gym owner on xxx board", find a qualified person who happens to be a small gym owner, then say "xxxxx should be on the board".

 

[KB_Legend]

Also going to add that small gym owners and coaches have the same access to information as everyone else weather they choose to use it or not... And I would say there are quite a few people who are very involved in the USASF who are from what would be considered small gyms, just saying

 

[tumbleyoda]

Also going to add that small gym owners and coaches have the same access to information as everyone else weather they choose to use it or not... And I would say there are quite a few people who are very involved in the USASF who are from what would be considered small gyms, just saying

Access is always key. When you don't have it you have to wait to get the information. By the time you get it you are usually 1/2 a season to 2 seasons behind those who have access. From a business point of view it can kill you.

IMO this is not just putting it up on a website. It is workshops, clinics, regional meetings, e-mails, phone calls made and returned. Saying you can call or e-mail______ means nothing if it is not returned in a prompt and timely manner. If small gyms ignore all that then shame on us.

I am glad to be with a gym that is USASF supportive. I look forward to being more involved in the future.

 

[SharkDad]

17. Merge divisions by team size, rather than # of males (to a point.)

It is my opinion that Large Senior teams are more like Large Limited than they are like Small Senior. The difference in 16 females affects the what you can do much more than 3-4 males can. When forced to combine because of numbers, these divisions should merge 1st:

Large Senior - Large Limited
Small Senior - Small Limited
Semi-Limited - Unlimited (should actually just be 1 division to start with, but I digress)
Large Junior Coed - Large Junior
Small Junior Coed - Small Junior

I think that the judges can more fairly compare teams with similar size, rather than trying to scale down ratios of skills and fairly compare deductions.

NO WAY.
Compare Brandon Black or another Small Limited with Stingrays Orange, CA or CEA Small Senior.

They are each clean and great teams, but the difficulty in some of the skills for any comparable coed team will generally be better than an all-girl. The same goes if you take CEA SE or WC SS and compare them to one of the top Large Limited teams. Pick your comparison: baskets are higher, more of the advanced tumbling passes, advanced stunt sequences. Cheernerd could probably give exact stats.

I agree with paring down the divisions, but not combining any Coeds with All-girl.

 

[Mclovin]

17. Merge divisions by team size, rather than # of males (to a point.)

It is my opinion that Large Senior teams are more like Large Limited than they are like Small Senior. The difference in 16 females affects the what you can do much more than 3-4 males can. When forced to combine because of numbers, these divisions should merge 1st:

Large Senior - Large Limited
Small Senior - Small Limited
Semi-Limited - Unlimited (should actually just be 1 division to start with, but I digress)
Large Junior Coed - Large Junior
Small Junior Coed - Small Junior

I think that the judges can more fairly compare teams with similar size, rather than trying to scale down ratios of skills and fairly compare deductions.

NO WAY.
Compare Brandon Black or another Small Limited with Stingrays Orange, CA or CEA Small Senior.

They are each clean and great teams, but the difficulty in some of the skills for any comparable coed team will generally be better than an all-girl. The same goes if you take CEA SE or WC SS and compare them to one of the top Large Limited teams. Pick your comparison: baskets are higher, more of the advanced tumbling passes, advanced stunt sequences. Cheernerd could probably give exact stats.

I agree with paring down the divisions, but not combining any Coeds with All-girl.

I actually completely DISAGREE with you. Rays could out clean ANY small ltd coed team and their stunt difficulty is good enough to keep their stunt scores high. I think there are several small senior all girl teams that could beat the small ltd teams. And as for the large senior vs. large ltd divisions, large senior KICKS BUTT on their stunting and pyramids compared to large limited! And I don't think large limited out tumbles them by much anymore either. Large limited does have a cleaner look to them, but the large all girl teams could definitely hang with the coed teams, without a doubt.

 

[SharkDad]

I understand this point, but I just don't think that the split of divisions should based on the Rays ability level or WC, CA, CEA for that matter. There are elite teams in every division that can outscore teams in divisions with higher difficulty. CEA SE showed that at BUTBT.

The division split should happen for the best of all programs out there.

I think the important fact here is that any number of boys allows for some level of difficulty that can be increased over an all-girl team. They can achieve a higher level of tumbling, standing tumble, increase the difficulty of stunts. This is a general statement overall but that is the point. A division split should be the best for everyone, especially the small gyms out there that can only field one Level 5 team.

 

[Mclovin]

So you think 4 boys could do more for a routine than 16 extra girls?? I'm confused by that statement. I guess I just don't agree. EVERYTHING about a large team is different than a small team, for the good and the bad. Combining divisions based on size versus girl/boy status just seems more fair to all gyms, including the small gym...

 

[SharkDad]

I don't think you should compare small vs large or Coed vs All Girl.

Using that as the discussion, we can probably break this one item out to another thread by now. . .

 

[BlueCat]

The problem is that skill ratios, fairness in deductions, fairness in judging "sharpness", types of pyramids and transitions, etc. are ALL dramatically more similar for two teams of 36 (even with 2-4 boys) than they are for a team of 36 and a team of 20.

A team of 20 drops 1 of their 4 stunts. A team of 36 drops 2 of their 9 stunts. Who get the higher score? In our current system, the small team will ALWAYS score higher (all else being equal) than the large team, despite the fact that the large team hit a higher percentage of their stunts. This discrepancy goes away when you compare two teams of 36.

To me, no matter how you look at it, 16 girls affect the look, flow, and composition of team DRAMATICALLY more than 3-4 boys.

 

[SharkDad]

I agree 100%. I hope I didn't mis-communicate my point earlier so I'll say it slightly diffferently: I don't think that you should compare or combine small with large teams. I hope most people agree on that point by now.

My other point is that I don't think you should compare or combine ANY coed with all-girl for the very reason BlueCat illustrates. The skill rations, types of pyramids, transitions, and tumbling change when you add any boys to a team.

So back to the question, how many and what type of divisions should there be?

I say:
Small
Large
Small Limited
Large Limited
Large Unlimited

 

[kyyyyyyxo]

So this thread is super old, but I have been thinking about some of these issues and thought it would be a good idea to bring it back up into the light. Also, I’m sorry if there are typos.

My roommate’s friend played club soccer and I was just asking her more details on the system. She said that they gave their information to the coaches at the beginning of the year (whenever they took team pictures their individual picture was also sent in for their cards). Her coach kept the whole teams cards for the season (so no irresponsible kid could lose or forget theirs) and that it was gone through each game.

My brother has played hockey since the age of 3 and now is playing in college at the age of 21. Back in the day they filled out a paper form and sent it in, with their USA hockey registration they also receive month USA hockey magazines. Now I believe it is done online and paid by credit card.

I also remember that to be a ref at any level you must go through a very large process. There were events similar to a convention in which you watched videos, read booklets, yada-yada-yada, and then you eventually got certified. These “conventions” were held in several places in each state every year, on more than one occasion. I also remember that there were levels, which I don’t remember entirely. I do remember that when you first became a ref at the lowest level, you could only ref slower paced, easier games (the equivalent to cheers mini or youth, but probably would be better as levels 1- 2). You had to be this ref level for so many years or seasons before you could move on to the next level. These years / seasons needed to be updated as well. Therefore, in order to be a ref at the high level of midget major AAA or junior A hockey, you needed to be very experienced and have went to several conventions over many years time. This would be hard to implement on cheer because of everyone would be starting at judging level 1 and there would be no one to judge above level 1 - 2, this could be solved by only having new judges follow the system; judges who have already been judging for X amount of years would get an automatic by to level 5 if they could pass a test of some sort. There is also, I believe, a system like this for coaching. You have to go through safety certifications and levels over time in order to be a top level coach. A problem with doing this in order to be a certified coach / judge with USASF would be that although there are standard rules and safety violations, there is no standard score sheet yet for judging conventions, this could be fixed if there was a universal score sheet. I believe that if USASF deciding on a universal score sheet and implied a rule that either companies follow it and hire only USASF certified judges or they will not be a part of USASF. I believe that companies would comply. The only other problem that I see with this is that for smaller competitions at local high schools and smaller colleges there might not be enough qualified judges around. Such as, where I am from there is annually a smaller UCA competitions hosted at SRU. There might not be more then 3 - 4 teams in each division and some divisions only 1 team (particularly level 5). It would be hard to justify having to make sure all judges were certified at the highest level for 1 team (if that many certified level 5 judges were even around). At larger competitions and nationals this is easy because there are many teams in each division to rotate levels of judges. The only solution I can come up with is that the judging level system might only be necessary at competitions with more than X amount of teams.

The biggest problem people have brought up with implementing a system such as this is the money, someone’s time to do it, and that cheating is still possible. Once the system was thought up and worked out in full, and approved by USASF, I believe that membership fees would eventually pay for the process itself. As for the time to do it, I am pretty sure that there are enough people out there that care enough to do it if a full system was thought of.

Now on to the cheating - yes cheating would still be possible. However, think of it this way:
(I am just using this example) For the most part, gyms that I have known to have cheated do this. Athlete #1 come to Gym A at the beginning of the season, they turn in their copy of a birth certificate and insurance card, and then the athlete quits. Athlete #2 is their replacement, and they happen to be illegal, but WAIT, Gym A still has Athlete #1s information. So now Athlete #2 is suddenly Athlete #1.
This system would eliminate this type of cheating in the following ways (over time when the system had been going for a few years) If athlete #1 had already been registered with USASF at any time, athlete #2 could not steal their identity. If athlete #2 had already been registered with USASF at any time, then tried to use athlete #1s information with their own picture - athlete #2s picture is already in the system. The only way this would be possible is if neither athlete had ever been in the system, and even with that there are flaws. Say that athlete #2 happens to be a 10 year old girl taking the place of a legal 12 year old on a worlds team, yes the cheating would work - until the "12" year old girl ages out. The cheating athlete for all of those years is suddenly ineligible at age 16 along with not having updated insurance every year; it would be a lot harder to get an athlete to cheat knowing that it would ruin their eligibility in the future. As for making an athlete younger, this would really only be useful to make someone who has aged out now under 18 - the likeliness of someone being good enough to be worth cheating with and them not being in the system already is very small.

 

[kyyyyyyxo]

In conclusion to my two page long novel, I would enjoy this system:

1. USASF universal score sheets, grids, rules, and safety procedures so that coaching and juding certification is possible.
2. These to be updated and release each year on January 1st to take effect August 31st (competition season) that year. This way there will be time allotted for coaches to research new rules and plan for the best teams at their tryouts in the spring.
3. USASF would also release all of their dates around the country for judging and coaching certification conventions (like I mentioned in my novel) so that coaches could plan accordingly.
4. All gyms competing at USASF events should notify USASF by January 1st of their spring tryout dates for the next season.
5. X amount of weeks after each gyms official tryout dates, The gym needs to send in the following: temporary teams (let’s say: Senior level 5, Senior Level 3, Junior level 4, Junior Level 2, Youth level 2, Mini Level 2, Mini level 1), along with each temporary team the gym must send in certification of at least 2 coaches qualified to coach at that level. (You can coach down levels but not up) Each athlete’s paper work would include a USASF membership fee, birth certificate, insurance card, waiver, and current picture. Each coach’s paper work would include a USASF membership fee, photo, and certification papers. If a gym does not yet have a coach that meets level standard, either a team must drop down levels or the coach has so many weeks in order to get certified (so that they are not practicing unsafely)
6. Gyms and coaches must properly display certifications to athletes and parents at the gym (similar to a nail / hair salon and their board certifications).
7. Gyms would then register their temporary USASF competition schedule. X amount of weeks before their first competition is whenever Gyms must officially declare their level and age for the season (so that they can change divisions over the summer if needed). If the team goes up a division or changes age groups, each cheerleaders and coaches paper work must still comply. From this point on, a team may only go up a division – not down, and if a team go up a division their coaches must again show certification.
8. Competition companies would early on have a temporary idea of what amount of level teams will be attending their competitions to plan for the proper amount of certified judges. At the event, the judges must have a certified photo USASF judging id on them (similar to how when you go get your nails / hair done they have their board certification and picture on the wall). Each score sheet that a judge fills out will also have their name and certification number on it. If a judge’s certification number is matched with so many errors on score sheets each year, then that judge is moved down a level in certification or has their certification revoked for one year until it can be repeated at a “convention”.
9. When teams show up to a competition and enter warm ups, traditionally they take an event team picture first. Directly after this picture (while in the same area so no “athlete swaps” can be made, each athletes ID card must be physically matched via photo and scanned (these scanners are everywhere on my campus they are not outrageous expensive for competitions) to check for the team, level, and age they are registered for. Each athlete would take all of 30 seconds unless they did not match, this would take 10 minutes for a small team, 16 for a large with one person running the scanner.
10. If an athlete does not have a card, does not match, or any other issue – the team does not compete.
11. As for athletes joining after initial tryouts, immediately after an athlete’s team placement they would need to fill out a form online or paper the same as everyone else’s and send it in to USASF. They would then get a temporary card with their name, age, and team level. If a gym is bring a temporary id-ed athlete to a competition they need to notify the company the week before so that the company can pre-check that athlete with USASF. In only a few weeks, their permanent card would come.
There are still flaws to this system, just like there at flaws with USA hockey and club soccer, however I think it is a very good base to a ID and certification system that all-star cheerleading desperately needs in order to be a successful sport. The money involved with my above mentioned system would be: membership cards and scanners, and hosting conventions for coaches and judges. Membership cards would be covered by a later determined USASF fee, scanners would need to be purchased by competition companies (again they are everywhere on my college campus they would not be a huge burden to a company), and the conventions for coaches and judges would be paid for by the fees that would be needed to be paid in order to be certified (similar to how athletes would pay USASF fees).

I would like to hear anyone else’s ideas that could be added to this and get i

 

[mstealtoyou]

WOW I'm going to have to read over that a few times. You have given this alot of though Kylie!

 

[cupieqt]

Holy smokes I just read that whole thing and it is very well thought out and thorough. I have a question about dealing with last minute subs. I once had to call a girl to drive an hour to sub and practice for two hours with my srs before a comp.I've also heard of people being pulled out of the crowd. Would there be accomodations for this type of athlete or a way to temporarily credential them?