High School "sandbagging" In High School Cheer?

[Hscoach10]

So considering at NHSCC, do you guys think it's necessary to have teams separated by D1 or D2? It makes sense when it first started but now the teams in both divisions have pretty equal talent so is it really needed?

I don't really think school size has an effect in MOST cases however the medium and small divisions are so large that the split makes sense. The Large and Super divisions have less teams and I don't think combining divisions based on how many qualify is a bad idea?? IMO, if you have enough kids to field a super varsity team, your school size hasn't affected the number of girls in your program.

 

[CheerItFullOut]

We have a local school team that competes at JV but are Varsity Athletes- however they do it because they are bran new to the idea of comp - they are trying to build up performnace confidence and are still developing some true Varsity skills. We compete non tumble because in our District nobody tumbles... and in some instances it's prohibited from being taught as we have a lot of coaches who don't have the resources to develop technically sound and safe tumbling programs. I teach tumbling to my older kids in development for college programs and hope to eventually evolve into a tumbling program in the next 4 years as I've recently been granted more staff and can look to focus on that in the future. Outside of that- I thank God there's a non tumble division because our kids have developed advanced stunting skills and without this division we "couldn't compete"...I honestly don't care if a non tumble team "secretly" has standing fulls...I'm there to compete against the Best of the best in my division. If a team can't perform their tumbling, what bearing does it have on a routine that does not allow it? Just because everyone on the team can tuck doesn't necessarily mean their building skills will always be above par or consistent. It's sort of like saying "this singer is a great singer because she can dance as well"... I believe they're mutually exclusive and irrelevant to each other. To me-the more the merrier and everyone ends up earning what they earn being judged on their product.

 

[jscoach210]

I can assure 1 very very successful team from the northeast competed JV at NHSCC they had no varsity team this year....
it is very interesting isn't it ?


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[alyfornia]

Here are my two cents on the subject from my experience. It's very frustrating when you're the team on the floor competing against teams that bumped themselves down to win. We had a decently strong team and we were in novice varsity at USA competitions. We were what you would consider the quintessential novice team as we were new to competing but had been working on skills year after year. However, there were several teams in our division that obviously had higher skills that should have qualified as intermediate but bumped themselves down to novice because they wanted to win and they did. They were at both USA competitions we attended and it was frustrating to be pushing ourselves so hard and working on skills to get as many points as possible but these teams that just wanted to have the trophy won. I understand it's the name of the game and many teams do it but it was very frustrating for all of us. I don't think non-tumbling was division when I competed but if there was, we definitely would have jumped on it as our stronger skills were jumps and stunts.

 

[SparkleSpankies]

Our state competition does not have levels, a non-tumbling division, or a JV division so....impossible to sandbag. Most of our local comps are similar, although I guess you could put your Varsity in a JV division (what kids would go for that?)

I do know a local team that took out their tumbling to go non-tumbling at NHSCC.

I think we do kids a serious disservice when we play down for the sake of winning.

I used to go non tumbling for NHSCC b/c while I would tumble 75%, it was only handsprings and at most 3-4 running tucks (more like flips)... Also, decent stunters, but not in the quality for a traditional division. If I had full team and even 25% standing tucks and 50% running tucks plus, then I would say we are going in the traditional division. ALSO we were considered a large school, by like 3 kids (not kidding) and getting a bid out of the northeast would have been challenging enough, let alone even feel succesfull at NHSCC.

 

[mncheerqueen]

I feel like non tumbling division is honestly one of the best ideas to come out of the cheer world.
Sadly the "non-tumble" team I was referring to has all the skills both tumbling and stunting to be competitive in their respected tumbling division. It's sad that they drop to non tumble just to win (which they did).

 

[mncheerqueen]

I can assure 1 very very successful team from the northeast competed JV at NHSCC they had no varsity team this year....
it is very interesting isn't it ?


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Very.. our JV went up against them this year at NHSCC. I guess it was a rebuilding season for them.