FHSAA Competitive Cheer Advisory Panel Meeting Minutes Florida High School Athletic Association 1801 NW 80 th Blvd., Gainesville, FL. 32606 Tuesday, March 3, 2015 10:00 am I. Introduction and Purpose Kellie Doucette welcomed all members to the meeting and called the meeting to order. Members introduced themselves. Attendees included: Christina Bohler (Indian Rocks Christian), Cathy Brannon (Orange Park), Tanya Jones (Miramar), Gina Davis (Bay), Carolyn Shoemaker (Sebring), TiAnn Stark (Newberry), Kat Frisk (UCA), Kellie Doucette (FHSAA), Jamie Rohrer (FHSAA), and Meghan Accorsi (FHSAA Intern). II. Review Procedures, Agenda, and Expense Vouchers Ms. Doucette reminded everyone that they are here to help improve the state of the Competitive Cheer program for everyone in Florida and discussed that the meeting would be run using Robert s Rules of Order. The agenda was reviewed and everyone was told to fill out their travel expense vouchers. III. Selection of Chairperson Ms. Shoemaker made a motion to nominate Ms. Stark as the Chairperson and Ms. Brannon second the motion. The motion was approved 6-0.
IV. Review 2014 Minutes/Agenda for Adoption A motion to approve the minutes was made by Ms. Brannon and was second by Ms. Jones. The motion was approved 6-0. V. Review 2015 Competitive Cheerleading State Finals Ms. Doucette began by saying how she thought the finals were run well operationally and knows of minor changes that need to be made to improve for next year. The coaches were in agreement that it went very well and had no real complaints at this time. Both Ms. Davis and Ms. Shoemaker stated that their regions were run well. VI. Old Business a. New Advancement Rules i. The rule of being able to advance to states if you qualified at regionals was implemented. VII. New Business a. Action Items i. Scoring range sheet/scoring rubric: Bohler/Jones/Stark Recommendation: To create a scoring sheet rubric or range for the judges so that there would be less subjectivity in how the judges score routines. [Motion Brannon; Second Jones]. Discussion: There was concern expressed that this would cause safety issues because coaches who are coaching to the rubric could be pushing kids to do what they are not ready to do. It advocated that this would help the judges and would provide more consistency, especially because it is widely felt that clean/sharp routines are not winning anymore. Ms. Frisk
pointed out that there are guidelines for coaches on the website. Vote to approve: motion fails 5-1. It was suggested that the coaching guidelines add a range that is not as specific as a rubric to the. It was determined that this issue will be left up to the staff and the score sheets/guidelines will be reviewed. ii. Advancement at Regionals: Davis Recommendation: Have one team from 1A and one team from 2A advance straight to the state finals [Motion Shoemaker; Second Brannon]. Discussion: Classifications should be established and published before regionals because it helps coaches to know who they are competing against. This concern may be addressed when we get to later agenda items. This item was them tabled with a 6-0 vote to discuss later (Motion to table Shoemaker; Second Davis). After discussing further agenda items, motion fails 0-6. iii. Advancement from Regionals to State Finals: Jones Recommendation: To increase the minimum raw score to move straight to finals. [Motion Jones; Second Davis]. Discussion: The idea was discussed that there needs to be an increase in the minimum raw score to advance directly to the finals. Some teams are advancing directly to the finals by default because there are only two teams in the division at regionals. It was discussed by the panel that since we just changed the advancement rules this year, eliminating the second place team moving directly to the finals may be too much change, however all agree that there should be a minimum score to advance directly to the finals and teams should not advance automatically because there are only two teams in a division at regionals. The minimum average raw score of those advancing directly to finals was 76.54, however that may be too high this first
year. The panel agreed to lower the minimum raw score to 70 this year and readdress increasing that next year. Vote to increase the minimum raw score for automatic advancement to finals for both 1 st and 2 nd place teams, motion passes 6-0. iv. Advancement from Semis to Finals at States: Davis Recommendation: Have 1 team for every 3 teams advance at state instead of 1 team for every 4 teams. [Motion Davis; Second Brannon]. Discussion: This will increase the number of teams and give more people a chance to advance, this will have the biggest impact on the non-tumbling division as they had more teams in the semifinals than other divisions. The panel decided to table this until we discussed classification. Motion to table Jones; Second Shoemaker. After discussion of classification, motion passes 6-0. v. Set Classification: Davis Recommendation: Have set classifications like the other high school sports in Florida. [Motion Davis; Second Brannon]. Discussion: Having set classifications like other sports would lock competitive cheer into a classification for 4 years like the other sports. It is the opinion of many coaches state-wide that they would like to see the classifications posted online before regionals begin. Classifying competitive cheer is unique in the respect that no other sport selects divisions and if you break a regional competition into divisions and then into classifications, it will significantly water down the regional competitions and approximately 20% of the teams in the state will advance automatically to the finals. Motion failed 0-6. Ms. Doucette and the staff will look at how to make this issue better without being locked into a class for 4 years.
vi. Non-Tumbling divisions to mirror Tumbling: Jones Recommendation: To create additional divisions for non-tumbling. [Motion Jones; Second Davis]. Discussion: In order to maintain the integrity of competition as well as because of the financial impact, we need to keep the current structure of 8 divisions. It was suggested to eliminate the XL all-girl division and create a medium non-tumbling division. Motion passes 5-1. b. Discussion Items i. Regional plaques: Bohler It is the host s responsibility to purchase plaques and it is up to the regions to do so. The trophy has to be specific as outlined by the FHSAA. ii. State Logistics: Bohler The discussion was that teams are rushed through warm ups and that a 4 minute tumble time is not productive for non-tumbling teams. It was suggested having warmups be a full 8 minutes on the floor to do whatever you want. The panel was in favor of this idea. iii. FHSAA Judging Panel: Brannon The concern is the appearance of bias at the judging table when it is widely known that a member, at the table regardless of their job, has ties to a particular school. As the general public is unaware of what the individual roles are of all those at the judging table, it gives the appearance that someone may be trying to influence the judges during a particular routine. The suggestion was made to have judges that have strong ties to a team physically leave the table during certain routines to decrease bias. The FHSAA and UCA do not put judges in a position to score a team they have previously coached.
Additionally, Mrs. Rohrer pointed out that it would be impossible to eliminate all the judges that people feel should be eliminated and still have qualified judges. It also came up that some judges, who have judged year after year, may be conditioned to expect a certain level of performance from teams and one way to alleviate this could be to rotate the judges on the panel from year to year. It was also recommended by several members that there should be different judges in the finals than in the semi-finals as it would provide a clean slate. With the new advancement rules, judges see the semifinal routines twice where they only see the automatic advancers one time and his may provide an advantage to some teams. FHSAA and UCA acknowledge that this may be difficult given our limited number of judges qualified to judge a state routine. One suggestion made was to swap the panels so it s not the same people judging, but it wouldn t require 10 additional people to come in for finals. FHSAA and UCA will evaluate the judging pool and see how to best work through this concern, they also asked that if there was concern with particular judges to let them know and they would handle that on a case by case basis. Additionally, it was recommended that all teams should draw for finals order, not just the teams advancing from semis to finals. iv. State Entry List/Selected Division: Davis The concern is that coaches are not finding out their classification until the week of states and it is difficult to prepare to compete against unknown opponents as well as prepare for the potential shift in classification. Coaches would like to see their classifications prior to regionals. Classification has always been done by listing the schools in population order from largest to
smallest and dividing the list in half, however with the advancement rule that was put in place this year, it was done per division, not as a whole as it has been done in the past, which caused some schools to shift between 1A and 2A. It is difficult to have a definitive cut off number in competitive cheer due to the fact that it is the only sport where a coach can select their division and that division can change year to year. This could create excessively lopsided divisions year to year where you could end up with double the number of teams in one classification. Having the ability to adjust gives more teams the opportunity to participate. However, the FHSAA realizes that this is a piece of information the coaches need to have and we will have the classifications done sooner provided all State Entry Lists are entered on time. v. Co-Ed Score Sheets: Davis There should be a section on the cheer score sheet for co-ed stunts. Everyone was in agreement. UCA and FHSAA will address this when we review and update the score sheets. vi. Third Classification: Davis This item was already discussed. vii. Professional Photographers: Davis Seeking Smiles has the contract with the FHSAA and they have the first right to go and take pictures at regional competitions. If they refuse, a school can use a photographer of their choosing.
viii. Changing time of States: Davis The state cheer competition overlap with girls districts for basketball and some teams, especially in smaller schools, are missing the opportunity to support their teams. The FHSAA is set to review the calendar as a whole and will look at this when they review the calendar. ix. Allow video submission: Jones There is already the opportunity to submit videos for review, however; it is felt that people do not really know this. x. Spring Practice/Try-Out Clarification There was some question as to why we have Policy 18.3, spring competitive cheerleading since teams cannot have try outs until October. It was pointed out that this is a Title IX issue and mirrors football so the panel decided to leave the policy as is and not request any change to the policy. There was also some discussion regarding Policy 6.1.1, season limitations, and 6.1.1.1 Spring Practice, and how they relate to side-line and competitive cheer. Some coaches have received conflicting information stating that they should have their competitive cheer tryouts during the allotted spring practice. While the policy says that competitive cheer may engage in practice, it does not say that they can have tryouts for the next season. Just like football, the spring competitive cheer meetings in May are an extension of the previous season, so tryouts for the next season are prohibited at that time. Side-line cheerleading and side-line tryouts are not governed by the FHSAA so a school can have their side-line or spirit team tryouts at their discretion in accordance with their school and district policies. However, schools must abide by the rules that limit
participation to bona fide students of the school (i.e. 8 th graders or incoming students cannot try out unless and until they are bona fide students of the high school). Policy 20.2 defines the summer season as being outside the FHSAA sports year. Teams can attend camp, hold stunt clinics, choreography clinics, etc. so long as they don t make them mandatory for the October competitive cheer tryouts. VIII. Advisory Panel Structure a. Mr. Alex Ozuna came into the meeting to speak about restructuring this panel to mirror a committee structure. To do this, there will be a nomination and election process. We will start by first having a nomination and election for the seat being vacated by Kathy Brannon s retirement. Then, after the 2016 advisory panel meeting, all of those members who have been on the panel since 2010, their seats will be up for election. There will be 1 month for the nomination process and peers will select who they want to represent their section. Elections will be on a three year cycle. There will also be an FACA rep on this committee. IX. NFHS Spirit Rules a. These were sent out to everyone. The panel suggested more pictures and Ms. Doucette reminded everyone that the rule books are going to be online next year. X. Sportsmanship Update a. Be mindful of what is posted on social media by coaches and athletes. Remind new coaches as well as athletes that they are representing themselves and their schools when they incorporate school logos and mascots in their social media postings. XI. Compliance and Eligibility Update a. No new updates.
XII. Round Table Discussion a. The panel would like to have the deductions fixed so you are not getting points off for the same thing under multiple categories. b. Ms. Doucette gave a recap of what the panel wanted to see happen: i. Split classifications before regionals based on the total number of teams committed to compete. ii. Add the minimum raw score of 70 to the advancement policy so a team must place 1 st or 2 nd in their division and earn a raw score of 70 to advance directly to the finals. Teams will still advance to the semis with a raw score of 60. iii. Eliminate the Extra-Large division and add a medium non-tumbling division. This caps the number of girls competing at 20 because that is as many as the large division allows. iv. Adjust the score sheets so that: there is a Co-Ed Stunt section on the Co-Ed Cheer score sheet, increase the point value of stunts on the non-tumbling score sheets and adjust deduction and rule infraction sheet so teams aren t penalized multiple times for the same thing. XIII. Adjournment a. Motion to adjourn by Ms. Stark, second by Shoemaker, motion passed 6-0.