August was a little slow, but with school resuming for many it wouldn’t be a surprise if things start to pick up.
Author: Spirit Company
Spirit Company focuses on improving the cheerleading and dance industry via our news website, Spirit Post, and our skills website, Art of Cheer.
July was a little slow, but here are the public articles we found. There were also a couple article referring to a lawsuit or lawsuits filed against Varsity, USASF, USA Cheer, Jeff Webb and related entities that were behind paywalls.
- I Would Love to See it Recognised for the Amazing Sport That it is via Pundit Arena.
- USA Cheer “Return to Cheer and STUNT” Guidelines via USA Cheer.
Welcome to the 2nd half of 2020. In late June the USASF announced the standings in their Worlds Divisions Points Championship and the 2020 Scholarship Recipients. Here’s some of the other news from June.
- 5 Pivotal Moments That Drove Rebel Athletic’s Success via The Challenger Project.
- Cheerleading Giant Varsity Brands Gets $185 Million in New Capital to Power Through Pandemic via Dallas Morning News.
- Ryan Martin O’Connor Named UK Cheerleading Head Coach via UK Athletics.
- AAC Will Limit Marching Bands, Spirit Squads During Football Season via Commercial Appeal.
- Sweeping Changes at Varsity All Star via Cheer Updates.
Welcome to June. Both USASF & IASF have publicly posted their Divisions and Rules for the upcoming season, something USASF hasn’t done in a couple seasons.
- STUNT Receives Emerging Sport Recommendation from the NCAA’s Committee on Women’s Athletics via USA Cheer.
- USASF announced the Regional Advisory Board members for the 2020-21 season.
- University of Kentucky Takes Action to Protect Students, Integrity of Championship Cheerleading Program via UK Now.
- Berger Montague: All-Star Cheer Gym Brings Class Action Alleging Varsity Brands Monopolized All-Star Cheerleading Competitions and Apparel via PR Newswire.
- ‘Not ‘Sport’ Enough for Ontario?’: Cheerleaders Boo Unequal Treatment via Ottawa Sun.
- USA Cheer announced Youth Cheer Rules for the Sideline.
- Ex-UK Cheer Coach Says He Disagrees With Dismissal in First Public Statement Since Firing via Kentucky.com.
- Delayed Tryouts Put Competition Cheer Coaches in Tough Spot via The Daily Tribune.
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- A Digital Workbook
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To register, log in to your Member Profile and look for the Upcoming Meetings section for a complete list of events for which you can register.
Share With Your Athletes!
The BOLT/MARCH Workshop is designed for USASF Cheer and Dance Member Athletes who are entering 9th through 12th grades. Developed and led by alumni of the USASF Mentoring Leaders program, BOLT/MARCH will set athletes on a path to success and is now more affordable and more accessible than ever before! Athletes will register directly from their Member Portal!
- 6 Dates to Select From
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- 6 Hours of Training
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Coaches, encourage your athletes to continue their personal and leadership development by attending a VIRTUAL training. To share this information with your athletes, copy the link below and paste in your favorite platform (email, BAND, text, etc).
Categories
Season Ending Update III
Since publishing Season Ending Update II a couple weeks ago the International Cheer Union (ICU) and IASF have cancelled their World Championships and Varsity cancelled the combined Summit event mentioned in that second update. To our knowledge there are no in person cheer or dance competitions remaining scheduled as part of the 2019-2020 season.
Welcome to May. We should be recovering from Worlds and starting the all level end of the year events, but instead most of us are still sitting at home. USASF cancelled Worlds 2020. IASF hasn’t announced a definitive plan, but is leaving the door open for having the event in conjunction with the ICU Championship in the fall. Varsity has announced A Summit will take place combining their end of the year events into this single event.
- One Set of Rules for High School Cheer via USA Cheer.
- Varsity Spirit Idles Workers as COVID-19 Threatens Business via The Daily Memphian.
- “Sobering”: SC Cheerleading Gym Owner Recovering From COVID-19 Reflects on Experience via WLOS.
- Risk Minimization Remains Key in 2020-21 College Cheer Rules Changes via USA Cheer.
Categories
Season Ending Update II
Since publishing our Season Ending Update, USASF has announced Worlds 2020 is cancelled, but IASF is continuing to considering having the International teams compete in the fall with the ICU Championship.
Varsity announced a “One of a Kind” Summit that will combine or replace The Summit, D2 Summit, Dance Summit, and The US Finals. The event will not require a bid and will be open to Worlds eligible teams.
Categories
Execution First
Execution wins. I’d really like to stop writing with just that, but I feel like some sort of explanation is expected. On most of today’s scoring systems the difficulty portion is outlined enough that it’s hard to separate yourself from other teams on that side of the score sheet. In All Star Cheerleading if a team can’t get in the high range in every category that states specifically how to get in the high range, it becomes questionable if they are in the correct level. Of course there are exceptions, like teams put together to push kids or allow them to perform skills above the team average, but generally if you are trying to be competitive in a division you should be able to hit the high range in all difficulty categories.
With just about everyone that’s going to be competitive in a division being in the high range in difficulty it leaves execution as the deciding factor and the place you can separate your team. If you think of the teams and programs that consistently win does their difficulty or cleanliness come to mind. For me it’s cleanliness, aka execution.
How many teams can you think of that you would say the primary factor of their success over their competition is being more difficult? How about having better execution. What about being more creative? I can only think of 2 teams in which I think their creativity is what sets them apart from the other teams in their division and both of them rely on precise execution of their creative elements to ensure the skills are performed legally and are viewed by the crowd and judges the way they were intended to be. I can also only think of a couple teams that I feel like difficulty is the thing that consistently separates them from the competition and even within this group the most consistent ones also execute very well. Execution is the thing most of the highly successful teams I see use to set themselves apart from the competition.
Categories
Season Ending Update
The past week contained several updates to end of the season events.
- Worlds (Update Page)
- Plan is to reschedule for late June
- Will provide update by Friday, April 24th
- Would consider virtual championship before being rescheduled to July or later
- Summit(s) (Update Page)
- Plan is to reschedule for late June
- Will provide update by April 24th
- Would be cancelled before being rescheduled to July or later
- US Finals
- Will be virtual, details coming soon (Twitter Announcement)
- The One
- Cancelled (Cancellation Release)
Update:
- Season Ending Update II was published on April 28th
What a month! Here’s some of the news that is not related to the season pausing.
- Cheerleading in the UK: We’re Not on the Sidelines Any More via BBC.
- Black Girls Cheer: How a Mom’s Social Media Group Sparked a Movement via ABC.
- Cheer Shows Competitive Cheerleading Is Almost as Dangerous as Football. So Why Isn’t It Officially Considered a Sport? via Time.
- Cheerleading is a Sport – And it’s Also So Much More via Algonquin Times.
- Jamaica Olympic Association Secretary General Promises to Promote Cheerleading via Inside the Games.
- New Cheerleading Safety Data Available via USA Cheer.
- Cheerleading Rules Changes Focus on Safety, Risk Minimization via High School OT.
Categories
Season Ending?
About a week ago the season for many sports started falling apart. For me it started with several conference basketball tournaments announcing they’d be played without fans and picked up speed while watching an NBA game get postponed just before tipoff, after the players had warmed up. It spread quickly to other games and then to other sports and really hit home when March Madness, a personal favorite, was cancelled.
Between the Center for Disease Control recommending “cancelling all events of 50 or more people” for 8 weeks on March 15th and the White House suggesting everyone “avoid social gatherings of more than 10 people” for the next 15 days on March 16th, pretty much everything sports related I’ve seen was cancelled or postponed, except for the Iditarod sled dog race.
This responsibly, but unfortunately includes the scheduled end of the cheer and dance season. Since March 16th I haven’t seen any industry event scheduled before the end of May saying it would remain on it’s original date. This includes:
- ICU & USASF/IASF Worlds
- All Varsity Events including NCA College, Summits, and US Finals
- Many and possibly all Independent events. I’m not aware of any continuing, just not able to conclusive state I’m aware of all being postponed or cancelled.
Updates:
- Season Ending Update was published on April 9th
- Season Ending Update II was published on April 28th
At USASF and IASF, nothing is more important to us than the safety of the athletes, coaches, friends and families that attend our Worlds events. We are closely monitoring the potential impact the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), may have on upcoming Cheerleading and Dance Worlds events and will continue to make decisions based on recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control, local health officials and our event Partners. At this time, we have not received any indication that there is cause to cancel the upcoming Cheerleading and Dance Worlds events. We will notify you if circumstances change.
For what you should know, timely updates and more information on the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), please visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.
February came and brought some major events including both NCA and UCA High School Nationals, Cheersport, and the beginning of NCA All Star. USA Cheer also announced the 2020 National Team representative for Hip Hop (University of Nevada Las Vegas), Jazz (Brigham Young University), and Pom (University of Tennessee).
- How Cheerleading Evolved From One Man Yelling in Minnesota to 4.5 Million Leaping Cheerleaders via Business Insider.
- Cheerleading: Competitive Sport or Not via The Cord.
- ECU Cheerleading is More Than Just Pom Poms via The East Carolinian.
- Go Memphis! Go Tigers! Champs Again via Daily Memphian.
- USA Cheer Appoints New Director of College STUNT.
- Inside the Strange, Insular World of Cheerleading Music via Vice.
January came and brought significant events like UCA & UDA College Nationals, Majors, NDA All-Star Nationals, and JAMfest Cheer Super Nationals.
- UConn Cheerleading Returns To National Competition via UConn Today.
- REVIEW: ‘Cheer’ Shows How Grueling Cheerleading Can be & Plenty to ‘Cheer’: New Netflix Series Goes Behind the Scenes via Madison.com.
- ‘Cheer’ Is An Incisive Look At Injury, Coaching And Competition via NPR.
- USA Cheer announced the 2020 Special Olympic and Adaptive Abilities Teams, US National Junior Team Cheer Freestyle Pom Division Coaching Staff and Region, and US National Junior Team Hip Hop Division Coaching Staff and Region.
- Review: How Netflix’s Superb ‘Cheer’ Dispels Your Assumptions About Cheerleading via USA Today.
- Netflix Cheerleading Docuseries Sheds Light on $2B Industry via Fox Business.
- Teams Put Aside Rivalries to Honor Beloved Cheer Coach via LEX 18.
- Stunt Men: The Guys Who Power Polk Cheerleading via News Chief.
- ‘It’s a Hard and Challenging Sport’: Inside the World of Competitive Cheerleading via The Guardian.
- USA Cheer Response to Netflix’s “CHEER!” via USA Cheer.