California Allstars Smoed Review

 

Starting this week I will be reviewing one elite competitive cheer team at one of their competitions. I will judge their jumps, stunting, tumbling, and dance. This week I will be reviewing California Allstars Level 5 Smoed team at the American Showcase. This competition is a two day competition where teams compete two days and the judges compile the scores from both days for a total score. At this competition national champions, or first place winners, receive

• ·         Innovative National Championship Plaque

• ·         National Champion Banner

• ·         National Champion Medals

• ·         Trendy Redesigned National Champion Jackets

As I said I will be watching Cali Smoed’s performance from both days at the competition on YouTube, to review how they did. When you first look over the video of Cali Smoed’s day one performance, you think that they look perfect because of all the amazing stunts and tumbling they are doing but you have to look deeper into the video to see if the team executed all the difficulty they added into their routine.

The team starts off their routine with a toe touch straight to a standing twist full, all executing nicely. Next we see two stunt groups throwing flip over the tops, while the other athletes are moving into their new spots. This is a good use of transitions to make the moving around more visual. During this transition we see people on the group moving, people stunting while moving, and people tumbling to their new formations. Now we see a tumbling routine of a line of triple back handspring twist fulls towards the back, with more group tumbling, some going to the front and some going to the back. With a great toe touch basket in the back. The only thing so far I see that could use work is the toe touch basket could be thrown higher, but the flyer does a great job staying tight after the toe touch is executed.  

Next we move into the teams baskets, where they perform five groups of kick double full baskets. The front three baskets were perfect, and the back two could use a little more height. This moves straight into a stunt sequence, starting with a full up to arabesque. The flyers do a great job of staying tight on the way up the full up. Then especially the front middle flyer has great flexibility for the arabesque. The stunt groups move into move where the flyer fall onto her chest and rolled out into a somersault. The flyers back handspring back into the bases hands and go straight up to extension, where they pull a lib and tick tock over to the other leg. And water fall out of the stunt.

The stunt groups move into a new formation and go into a straight up extension and pull a scorpion. Two of the groups have great flexibility, but the other three groups need to work on their back flexibility more to make the scorpions look prettier. The flyers then pull a scale and double down from that.

The team moves into their jump sequence which is very good and has lots of difficulty in it. The sequence looks very good but I do see one girl that stands off to the side while the rest are jumping and later comes back in after the sequence is over. Next is the tumbling sequence which looks very nice, I didn’t see any points to take off for, except that the timing needs to be a little better among the partner tumblers, to make the tumbling sequences look cleaner. While the last partner tumblers are tumbling, two stunt groups throw kick doubles in the back. From the first time I watch this performance I could see how the flyers had their legs bent when doing the kick part of the stunt. If I was an actual judge I would take off points because legs should be straight the whole time during that stunt and it takes away from the whole view of the performance.

Lastly Smoed moves into their pyramid. Everything looks sharp in the pyramid for all the difficult stunts the team is doing. I only see one small bobble, (slip up, where stunt almost falls, but group saves the stunt), in the middle group before the flyer pull a lib.

To end the routine Smoed does their dance portion of the routine, which looks very good. The team has lots of transitions and up and down motions, for good visuals. However the last stunt that is supposed to go up and show off the ending of the routine, bobbles a lot and comes down before the music stops. Overall however this routine was near perfect with only a few small bobbles, and the fall at the end of the routine.

On day two of the performance everything was the same except the team fixed their minor bobbles. Also the stunt group in the back didn’t fall this time. So me being the judge I would give Cali Smoed a near perfect routine. At this competition The California Allstars Smoed was competing against Pacific Coast Magic and Cheerz Cheerleading Gym, and ended up getting first place out of the three.

Here is a video of the performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd6C1IwLVSg

  For the remainder of my blog posts I will be focusing on reviewing not only cheer videos but also other types of performances such as music videos, awards performances, movies, plays, and much more!