Q: Are club teams eligible to compete at the NCA/NDA Collegiate Championship?
A: Yes, as long as they are purely club cheer programs that only participate in cheer events.
Q: If you participate in both club cheer and anything else outside of the cheer umbrella (ex. gymnastics, acrobatics, etc.), are you still eligible to compete at the NCA/NDA Collegiate Championship?
A: No
Q: What constitutes eligibility?
A: Teams that fully and solely exist and clearly define themselves as a traditional or competitive club cheer team.
Q: USA Cheer is trying to keep the new format cheer‐centric but aren’t there some elements that are related to Gymnastics within?
A: STUNT is clearly derived from the skill elements developed directly from cheer. Tumbling has been a skill associated with cheerleading since the 1940’s. Tumbling is only one characteristic that helps to define the new sport of STUNT.
Q: What are the sanctioning bodies that you have worked with to create and develop this format/rule‐set?
A: We have worked directly with USA Cheer, the official governing body of all things related to cheerleading, in the creation of STUNT.
Q: Are NCATA teams able to compete in the NCA/NDA Collegiate Cheer and Dance Championship?
A: No. The teams associated with the NCATA are aligned with USA Gymnastics, and not cheerleading.
Q: How do you clarify/define what a “cheer” team is?
A: Teams that fully and solely exist and clearly define themselves as a traditional or competitive club cheer team.
Q: Why can’t teams that have been coming to the NCA/NDA Collegiate Championship every year until participate this year if they also participate in NCATA competitions?
A: The NCA/NDA Collegiate Championship is reserved solely for teams that function exclusively as traditional or club cheer teams. Teams that participate with the NCATA or other forms of gymnastics or acrobatics are no longer considered exclusively cheer based teams.
Q: Why aren’t NCATA teams considered to be cheer teams? Do they still consider the competitions they participate in to be competitive cheer competitions?
A: The NCATA is officially aligned with and governed by USA Gymnastics and does not function as a cheer organization. NCA would also not allow a collegiate women’s gymnastics team to compete in our cheer events as well. The NCATA is a form of acrobatics and tumbling specifically associated with gymnastics, and has no formal association with cheerleading.
Q: If USA Cheer/Varsity wants to work together with NCATA in future, why are you excluding them from the NCA/NDA Collegiate Championship?
A: They are currently two totally separate organizations under two totally different governing bodies. USA Cheer is committed to protecting the best interest of traditional and club cheer, while maintaining the highest integrity and fairness of its Championships and participating cheer teams.
Q: What are the differences between the NCATA and the current competitive cheer format and STUNT?
A: STUNT has taken all the athletic skill elements that have developed in cheerleading and put them into an objective, head‐to‐head competitive format that can be easily understood and followed by the coaches, athletes and spectators. The role of the coach and the coaching strategy has been integrated into the game format in order to allow each team to maximize their ability to be successful. The STUNT format is designed to be fast, entertaining, exciting, unpredictable, and understandable while still incorporating the traditional elements of a cheer competition. The 4th quarter of a STUNT competition consists of a more traditional performance commonly recognized as cheer, but is scored more objectively to determine the points awarded to each team. The competition format and scoring is more simplified than that of a traditional cheer competition.