Starting from Scratch: Worlds Weekend

If I was designing the Cheerleading Worlds from scratch, there are a few things I would do different.

USASF & IASF Championships

I would change the Cheerleading Worlds into multiple events. I’m going to use the United States as the example then apply it to other parts of the world. US Teams would go to Cheersport, JAMfest, NCA, etc. to earn bids to the USASF Cheerleading Championship, instead of the IASF Cheerleading Worlds. The USASF Championship would have Preliminaries on Friday and Finals on Saturday of Worlds weekend, with the medalist of the USASF Championship advancing to the 1 day IASF World Championship on Sunday. I would also implement NCA’s Challenge Cup system to ensure all teams earning a bid to Worlds weekend have at least 2 performance. In case you aren’t familiar with NCA’s Challenge Cup, it gives the teams not advancing directly from Preliminaries to Finals a second chance. These teams compete against each other on Finals morning with the winner advancing to Finals.

Countries with enough teams would follow this model outlined for the US. Teams from countries with too few teams to have their own Championship on Friday and Saturday would compete in an IASF Continental Championship with the medalist advancing to the World Championship. The base Continental Championships would be for Africa, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America. The advantage of being able to separate your country from the Continental Championship would be the guarantee of the medalist advancing to the World Championship.

One National Championship per Event Producer

I would only allow Event Producer that designate one event as their National Championship to award bids to the World weekend. These Event Producers could host as many events, championships, classics, etc. as they choose, but only one event would be able to use the term “National Championship” or imply it was a National Championship.

Awarding Bids at National Championships

I would allow Event Producers to award bids at their National Championship if the event has more than 100 teams. All bid awarding events would be able to award the same number of bids, one per eligible division. An at-large bid would be guaranteed to the winner of each division, but bids would not pass to second place for any reason. The number of Paid Bids awarded at an event would be used to differentiate larger National Championships from smaller ones. Larger National Championships would be able to award more Paid Bids, but the maximum total number of bids awarded at an event would equal the number of divisions offered at Worlds.

I would also remove the combined score requirement for awarding bids. This would allow 1-day National Championships to award bids and Event Producers to use a Semi-Finals and Finals format, if they choose.

Award Bids at Events with more than 200 Teams

I would allow Event Producers to award bids at all events with more than 200 teams as long as one of these events is their National Championship. Only an Event Producer’s National Championship would be allowed to award Paid Bids, but the other events with 200 or more teams would be allowed to award At Large bids to the champions of all the eligible divisions.