Ways To Eliminate Sandbagging

With all the talk in the amazing lvl 2 teams thread, I figured we could have a place to share ideas about ways to stop sandbagging.

My thought is that if athletes were credentialed at their true level then a team could be composed of whatever level athletes they want BUT....they may not compete at a lower level then the average of the athletes level credentialing.
This would help small gyms who need to place higher athletes on lower teams, but keep teams from competing at too low of a level.

For example if Team A has 5 lvl 5 athletes, 5 lvl 4 athletes, 5 lvl 3 athletes, and 5 lvl 2 athletes all on one team, then their average would be level 3.5...

now there are two options..
1.you could either round up the normal way so average 3.5 would be level 4 and up, and 3.4 would be level 3 and up.

2.Just take the first number, so 3.0-3.9 would be level 3 and up, 4.0-4.9 would be level 4 and up..

Does anyone else have any other ideas?

I gave my idea on the level 2 thread but will reiterate it here....
Some of us moms were discussing this last night at practice and here is what we came up with. Run it like travel hockey, teams form and gyms declare their teams with rosters by December. Most programs have competed once or twice by this time and should know what level they want the team to be at. Once the deadline has passed your teams are set (level wise) for the Nationals season. This would not affect crossovers because you can roster them on your team. If there is an injury and it is enough time out from a comp then you submit a form similar to a Leave of Absence form including the name of the rostered child that is injured and the name of the substitution that is being used. If it is a comp injury or during warmups, a substitute can be brought in but they must be on a roster currently with the gym.
Any gym wanting to form a team after the December cutoff must register them in the All Star Rec divisions and an athlete can not be rostered to an AS team and a rec team at the same time.
This accomplishes two things...1. It makes it unappealing to gyms to make half year "Dallas" teams with higher level athletes from their gym but doesn't create an issue for small gyms that use crossovers to their teams. The issue is not a team with a few higher level crossovers, the issue is teams stacking their team with a majority of higher level athletes for the intention of winning Nationals. 2. It will help gyms establish all star rec teams which I believe is going to become very big in the upcoming seasons for kids that want to do AS but want to have a life as well or are new to the sport and want to compete. Cheer Athletics, Excite, and ProSpirit all have AS Rec teams that have been very successful for their gyms in this area. I personally hope Spirit jumps on this next season and offers Purple, Black, and White teams.

But what about gyms like Twisters who formed Weathergirls later in the season (it was late December this year IIRC)? If they register as a 'rec' team does that mean they won't be allowed to go to worlds? Just curious.

That is true...It is not like they are forming that team to compete lvl 1 at nca...Most athletes are competing at a higher level than the rest of the season.

Thats why I feel as if making it to where you can have whatever level credentialed athletes on a team together and taking the average might work better. will coaches manipulate certain athletes credential level to make their average where they want it? yes...but I feel like its harder to bring your average up and down with out changing multiple credentials.

I also think credentialing should be down more with their tumbling skills then stunting skills. Stunting is a group effort...not a solo thing. It is easier to teach someone to stunt with other people than it is to tumble by your self, hence why we have a 4.2 level...

This why this idea was vetoed early on in the original thread. Correct.

Having a gym and an athlete make a decision to be registered as an athlete at a single level (not by skill) allows the gym to decide how best they want to use that athlete within the program, according to their own strengths and weaknesses and the needs of their team.

I can't see this registering of each skill being manageable, based on sheer volume of data. It would be equivalent to letting a gymnast compete level 5 on floor, level 7 on bars, level 10 on beam.... Doesn't happen for a reason. Maybe someone has an example from another team sport where this does work, and how?

In the majorette world...they have novice, beginner, intermediate, advanced and you can't move up a level until you've won so many titles in that level...not exactly the same thing and I don't think that would really work here but they at least have a solid rule as to what division you are competing in.

Let's look at this mathematically, using 18 athletes. A coach places 8 declared level 5 athletes with 10 declared level 4 athletes on one team. Your average allows you to compete level 4. But you have 8 level 5 athletes that can hit the scoresheet in each category. That means you only need one of your level 4 athletes that can hit each individual skill to be able to max out the scoresheet. And yet the ones 'doing the maxing' are almost exclusively defined level 5 athletes. Unless I am seeing this wrong, it puts us back where we started.

Requiring 2/3 of the athletes on any team to be true to level makes maxing the scoresheet the primarily result of the majority skills at the declared level, not the exceptions.

Sounds like a lot of paper work

However, if you have 8 lvl 5 athletes and 12 lvl 4 athletes your still not at 2/3 to compete level 5 either...which I could see as unfair too. Forcing a team with more lvl 4 athletes then lvl 5 athletes to go lvl 5 would make that lvl 5 team not be able to hit the score sheet anywhere which is not exactly fair to the athletes either..

That's not true and wouldn't work for us. Our first competition is always Spirit of Hope Nationals the 2nd weekend of January.

I love the idea of a percentage of the athletes must be the level they are competing at. However coaching at a extremely small gym I see some issues with the only being allowed to cross up or down one level. Say we have a few athletes reach level 5 before anyone else but don't have the ability to yield a team higher then level 3, where does that leave the 1 or 2 athletes who have progressed extremely fast?

Thats the main reason I don't like that rule...i could foresee small gyms not being able to keep their higher level athletes because they cant compete there, they dont want to wait till everyone else in the gym catches up to be able to compete..

They could register as level 4. They could compete Level 3 while you were growing. If you established a level 4 or level 5 team partway through the season, they would be eligible for either of those teams.

Again, remember that if 2/3 of the team must be true Level 3's, you aren't given an unreasonable advantage by doing this.

I've pushed this idea in numerous threads in the past, but I'll reiterate here.

A gym credentials athletes at a level by the start of your first competition. Teams must contain a majority (50.01 percent or more) of athletes credentialed at the level you're competing at. You can move an athlete up or down one level, one time, during the competition season.

Crossovers would be limited to 2 levels up/down at any time. (i.e., no level 5 athletes on a level 2 team, no level 4/5 athletes on a level 1 team) That would allow you to still move some athletes from your higher level team down to lower level teams if need be, but maintaining the integrity of the team.

The policy outlined above would allow you flexibility to use subs or crossovers, or to move up an entire team up/down a level if skills changed during the year.

It would prevent teams from dropping down levels en masse for a specific competition, and would encourage skill mastery and appropriate assessment of a team's skill level when putting together a team. Yes, you could credential level-5 capable athletes as a level 3 team, but A.) that can happen today and B.) you run the risk of running off those athletes if there are other teams that would take them.

@GreatWhite92, would you mind taking a moment to lay out your proposal like this example below, and add the pros and cons you and others have raised? It helps to see the bigger picture in one spot. Your suggestion is triggering more dialogue, which is what we need to find the best solution. It could end up being some blend of these two, if we can see them side-by-side...

In the original thread we discussed the problem of using a 50% figure. You could load the team with higher level athletes up to the 49.9 % mark. But you still would only need one athlete that is registered at the true competing level to hit in each skill and meet the majority requirement on the scoresheet. This is why we went to 2/3 and 1/3

I guess I am not understanding what you are saying. Are you saying they do have a level 5 team with only those handful of Level 5 skills and the rest of the team is composed of athletes competing up two levels to make that happen? Believe me, we have been there. We understand the pain and the frustration. But I am not sure how having a level 5 team with a minority of level 5 cheerleaders will ever help you. If they never win, odds are they will leave anyway. That's reality.

Have I totally missed your point?