Which Competitions to go to & which to avoid

Date: Mon Feb 27 2:24 PM, 2006

RE: Which Competitions to go to & which to avoid

Date: Mon Feb 27 2:40 PM, 2006

Clarification please wrote:

Not to defend USA, but MOST teams did not have to compete on Friday. So maybe this team wasn't even scheduled to compete Friday night. (You can look at the differences between Friday and Saturday lineups on www.usacamps.com) Friday decided if you would be able to compete on Saturday. Saturday's competition determined if you would move on to finals on Sunday. So, unless your team was bumped from the Saturday competition, I can only assume that your team was the 3rd place team out of 3 and they only advanced 1 and 2 to finals on Sunday. So was your team only allowed to compete on Friday? Or did they compete on Saturday too and then get bumped?

It wasn't my team, I'm just friendly with the program owner. But in theory, you would have to compete on Friday to compete on Saturday. This team that bumped the 2nd place team from Saturday's competition didn't even compete on Friday. They just showed up on Saturday after not competing at all on Friday and were put in Saturday's competition and the original team in 2nd place from Friday was bumped and did not compete Saturday or Sunday. So they bumped a team from competing on Saturday for a team that didn't even compete on Friday at all. The original 2nd place team was told they would compete Saturday, and then when they showed up on Saturday was told "Hey, this team just showed up and they're competing now instead of you."

Date: Mon Feb 27 2:56 PM, 2006

It still sounds pretty weird to me. So, they definitely only competed Friday? Because like I said, most teams did not compete on Friday. Friday was some prelim that only certain teams had to attend. I don't know what the criteria was for advancing straight to Saturday (maybe a win at a regional? Or maybe just attending a regional, I really don't know) but in small coed (elev 5) for example, I know Dynasty was the only team to to have to compete on Friday. The Saturday lineup had spots marked "open" to leave room for the teams that advanced from Friday.

Date: Mon Feb 27 3:09 PM, 2006

One competition I really didn't like was Spirit Sports. I think the main thing I hated was the venue itself. The seating (folding chairs) on the floor, the poor view of the competion, the expense are among some of the things that bothered me. At least have it somewhere where there is stadium seating. I don't know why, but it really got on my nerves when they would put one person on blast for videotaping, when there were clearly tons of people around them also videoing. At one point, the emcee went to one lady with his mike and was telling her to put the camera away. And he put things on hold until she complied. Fine, videotaping was not allowed, but by the same token, there were times when I saw groups of 5 or 6 people standing in the aisles taping. And I saw pleny of little blue lights (lcd screens) through out the audience. Either let everyone tape, or let no one tape. Don't single out 1 person. I didn't go this year, but I loved SOS last year. My complaint about SOS was crappy seating at LA convention center, ie- spirit sports style. But otherwise, that was a fun competition. I loved the tournament style head to head battles. 2 teams compete, and immediately find out who won, who advances to next round and who doesn't. It was extremely well run and just a fun competition all around. It was a small competition, but hopefully as word gets out, this could big the next big thing in California.

Date: Mon Feb 27 3:31 PM, 2006

I was sitting really close to that woman and she completly ignored him. I think he made an example of her. But when he walked away, she continued to tape! It was crazy! Themusic was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too loud. It was totally uncalled for. The judges were still too low to the ground, so everyone had to sit to watch and the parents up front couldn't see even though they had priority seating. It was so close to the stage you looked almost straight up. I was extremely uncomfortable.

I tell ya, Cheersport spoiled me. No one will come close until they all start listening.

Date: Tue Feb 28 12:20 PM, 2006

Clarification please wrote:

It still sounds pretty weird to me. So, they definitely only competed Friday? Because like I said, most teams did not compete on Friday. Friday was some prelim that only certain teams had to attend. I don't know what the criteria was for advancing straight to Saturday (maybe a win at a regional? Or maybe just attending a regional, I really don't know) but in small coed (elev 5) for example, I know Dynasty was the only team to to have to compete on Friday. The Saturday lineup had spots marked "open" to leave room for the teams that advanced from Friday.

I don't know how the advancements worked. But they definitely only competed Friday. There were 2 teams in the division on Friday, they advanced both teams through to Saturday, and then on Saturday when they showed up to compete, they were told another team had been given the 2nd place advancement so they could no longer compete.