No...they didn’t even get the same points. the girl with cartwheel outscored ours with fulls because she was more consistent.
Another big difference at our school is purely school cheer kids don’t have as strong tumbling skills. Standing back but no other standing tumbling, no specialty passes, and less focus on technique. After they get one skill they immediately want to move on to next. Most of the girls have a tuck but they all throw their head and froggy bhs. I think dead mat in general is hard on their bodies. A lot of the girls also say knees hurt after working jumps. My daughter is quirky because her jumps are much better on dead than spring.
This is terrible. This is the reason we are wary of joining highschool cheer. One of the girls from our gym had to quit both mid season - the pressure to throw on deadmat Inflamed a lingering issue- Her knees just couldn’t handle it any longer.
I always made sure people understood that yes we compete a few times, but this is mostly a "for fun and school involvement" activity. This way we did not get the "omg this is nothing like all star cheer" crowd. It's not really meant to be, if that makes sense. At same time I wanted girls to have clean skills, so they were judged on the highest skill they could throw safely, with the starting point being a BHS (as a Varsity squad.) Athletes who either did not have any tumbling, or just a cartwheel, BWO, etc. were selected usually for JV, as it is more sideline-based and meant for those girls who don't have much tumbling or limited cheer experience. I'm a big fam of selecting JV and Varsity by skill instead of grade or age for that reason. Varsity is meant for those with competitive skills and the best of the talent pool. Save the JV for those who need to build skills (like you do in any other sport.)
I completely agree they are not the same. On all star team some of the younger parents would get frustrated if an older child was late to practice or missed because of a school event and ask why are they allowed to do that or why do they have to do both? School cheer & AS have similar elements but different sports imo. At our school everyone does sideline. From there you can choose to do comp and/or UIL. Even within comp squad we still have a very wide range of skills & experience.
Clarity: Everyone did sideline here as well but JV was understood as sideline only and working toward Varsity (no comps but they did do some exhibitions.) We did have a few girls CHOOSE JV because of other commitments and not wanting to compete on 2 teams (ex: some JV athletes played other very competitive sports at the AAU or Varsity level like soccer and purely just wanted to sideline.)
Here to be on competition team you have to do sideline.......but there’s always the team that tosses in a girl for a few weeks to compete at a higher comp and people didn’t say anything!