The most-overlooked minutiae of a routine may affect your score in a big way.
By Michelle Richard
CBN Dec/Jan 2009
Competition season is in its early stages and you’re gearing up for a successful season. Choreographers have come and gone, leaving you with what’s sure to be the winning routine. You realize, looking back on previous seasons, that it hasn’t been enough, however. What are the secrets to success that you’ve overlooked?
From a judge’s perspective, there are many components within a category on a score sheet that need to be evaluated. There are no secrets, just misunderstandings as to how important each individual category is and what exactly each category entails. This article is designed with the coach in mind, to help break down the “secrets” to improving your teams’ success.
Think Outside the Box
With so many strict guidelines to follow in all-star cheerleading, you may think it’s nearly impossible to score extra points when it’s challenging enough to incorporate what’s already required. However, it’s important not only to ensure that your teams execute the so-called compulsory skills within the stunt category, but also to heighten creativity within the stunts. For example, most people know that ground-up loads are no longer enough to get the scores, regardless of how amazing the flexibility within the stunt is. Creative mounts and dismounts are an integral part of the score and are even as many requirements in various company scoring grids.
Tweaking transitions within your stunt sequences is another way you can increase your score. Having your stunt groups perform a Liberty that turns to the side and hits an Arabesque doesn’t involve much creativity and, depending on your competition, may not be enough to get the scores despite excellent body position and flexibility. Teams that tend to score higher have coaches who come up with groundbreaking ideas. These coaches take what the scoring grids say and apply it directly to their sequences by putting in inverted stunts and transitions.
Additionally, seemingly small things like pointed toes, straight legs and good motions are not insignificant when it comes to breaking a tie in a specific category. Make sure your athletes know that merely hitting that Scorpion isn’t enough anymore.
Move Like It’s Magic
Spacing and transitions is a category that can usually make or break a team’s overall score. Coaches and athletes tend to focus on the actual skill categories, not realizing that this category is worth just as much as stunts. Some judges refer to it as the “gimme” category.
Spacing doesn’t just include perfect formations but a variety of them, as well as overall use of floor. For example, does your routine always focus on the center of the mat? Or do your formations tend to stay in the same position for too long? When building a routine, keep in mind how your team will utilize the floor.
The transition component of this category involves how athletes get from skill to skill. Some gyms are known for their seamless transitions and this is what sets them apart from the rest. Judges don’t want to be able to decipher how you got from one skill to another—you should just get there. If you can do this, you have successfully created a seamless transition and your score will reflect that.
Don’t Underestimate the Art of Synchronization
With many teams moving towards the Worlds concept of performing everything in unison, simple things like precise execution can make the difference in the event that there’s a tie. When teams are performing synchronized Basket Tosses, one’s eyes tend to get pulled in the direction of the Basket that’s just a tiny bit off in timing. This holds true for any synchronized element. There really isn’t any skill that can hide when not synchronized, and a judge will most definitely notice and score accordingly.
Synchronization not only affects the “timing score” but also the “overall impression score.” The reason is that when a judge takes the whole routine in to consideration for this overall score, teamwork comes into play. Competitive cheerleading is a collaborative effort. If the timing is off, teamwork isn’t being executed at its best and therefore must be scored accordingly.
Be Mindful of Motions
With more and more teams moving away from performing a cheer altogether, motion scores need to come from those done during jumps, stunts, dance and many other skills. Coaches and athletes spend so much time on skills that they tend to ignore the basic fundamentals. The high V that’s hit prior to jumps, within a stunt or pyramid sequence and within the dance or cheer, is nearly as important as the skill itself. In fact, a poorly executed motion before a jump can be very distracting and can affect the score of that skill as well as the motion score.
Fundamentals in cheerleading are still very important, and when teaching each skill to the athletes, these basics need to be reinforced. It will affect the outcome in the “skills categories” as well as the “overall impression” score. Sloppy motions are a pet peeve of many judges and don’t get overlooked.
Overwork Jump Execution
Out of the main skill categories, jumps tend to be the most overlooked. Coaches and athletes are often so worried about hitting a triple jump to a tumbling combination that they ignore the importance of the jumps themselves. The truth is the combination of a triple toe back isn’t going to get the credit you’re looking for. Many companies are leaning towards scoring jumps separately. This means that if a squad does a triple jump to back tuck combo, the jump score will be the same as if the squad had performed the triple jump without the tuck. This might be alarming to many coaches and athletes, because most are under the impression that as the jumps are executed, the second jump is not as good as the first and the third jump is not as good as the second. This is all because the worry lies in the execution of the tuck that is yet to come. And by placing so much focus on the tumbling skill, the majority of teams lose a sufficient amount of points in their jump score.
Now you would think that the score in tumbling would increase by so much that it wouldn’t matter if your jump score suffered. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. The majority of scoring grids don’t specify how many jumps prior to a tumbling skill need to be executed to increase the score. This means that one jump in the combination is as good as three. The score would remain in the same point range regardless of the number of jumps in the combo. The actual execution range for the jumps you performed could have been multiple points lower than the amount of points you gained by doing a triple jump combination.
To put even more emphasis on the importance of jumps, let’s take a look at last year’s Cheerleading World Championships. A very small range of points separated the top three teams in one particular division. The stunting and pyramid scores were virtually the same. The winning team won because of their score in the jump category. This team had taken the time to ensure that each jump was executed as well as the one before. This separated them from the other teams in their division and helped them bring home the gold.
Spread the Wealth
Hopefully you’ll walk away from reading this article with a better understanding of the “secrets” judges are keeping from you. The information has been there all along but now you have the key. Share this information with your coaches and athletes and get out there with that winning routine.
Helpful Hints
Smart and simple ways to earn extra points from the judges at your next competition.
- Make sure everyone lands their jumps with their feet together and at the same time, even if this sacrifices the height of a few jumps. Many judges will look at the floor beneath the jumps to look for a synchronized landing, as it’s easier to detect that way.
- If you’re having difficulty with timing in dismounts, try having the group that’s off dip one or two counts early to have the cradle perfectly timed. The early dip will go unnoticed and the desired synchronized dismount will be rewarded.
- Use simple gymnastics elements (i.e., front/back walkovers, aerials) as transitional elements. Lower levels do this all the time and it adds another layer to the art of seamless transitions.
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