When deciding on which All Star Cheerleading gym one would like their athlete to be a part of, there are certainly many factors that are involved.
As with many programs (and my guess would be other club-oriented sports as well – basketball, softball, volleyball, etc.), we are fortunate to draw athletes from all over.
We have athletes that enjoy a very easy commute (15 minutes or less).
We also have athletes that travel well over an hour to be part of what I truly believe is an extraordinarily special program which has been built over the years.
Recently we had a parent relay to us that although they travel (within 30 minutes) to our gym to take weekly skill-building classes and love our program, they had elected to join an All Star Gym which was a bit closer to their home (within 10 minutes) because it was simply, “a matter of geography.”
Although a bit of a head scratcher to me as this seemed like a committed athlete and family that went out of their way to come to us for training, they elected to fully enroll in a program which was closer to them, while continuing to come to us for training, due to “geography”.
There is a classic movie – ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ – in which there is an oddly comedic, somewhat wince-triggering scene, where a knight character essentially has his limbs cut off and in the midst of losing one of them swears that “’Tis but a Flesh Wound’” and demands that his duel with ‘Arthur’ continue.
The passion of this knight, as ludicrous as both the audience and Arthur may find it to be given the knight’s circumstances, can actually be analogous to that of the majority of families that I have come to know in All Star Cheer over the years.
This seems to be the case because similar to how the knight’s limb loss was viewed by the knight as a slight inconvenience, traveling to and from the gym that the All Star Cheer program is located at – in many cases over quite a sizable distance – is frequently viewed by All Star Cheer families as a slight inconvenience as well.
The “geography” reasoning I have observed to be more synonymous with families that prefer having their athletes involved with more town-oriented teams rather than those searching for the often more intense club teams (which draw athletes from a much wider radius, travel greater distances more often to compete, and typically are considered to be the premier teams in the sport they participate in).
Certainly not always, but more often than not, the most serious athletes in any given club sport (competitive cheer included) do not mind traveling what usually equates to somewhat of a distance in order to make sure that they are best-positioned to reach their true athletic ceiling while competing with what typically amounts to the highest caliber talent in whichever the sport may be that they are pursuing.
Perhaps chalking it up to the probable naivety of a new parent to All Star Cheer who is unfamiliar with the overall dynamics of club sports is the best route of reasoning to determine how a choice in the example offered may have come about.
For when it comes to All Star Cheer and like-setup club sports, with all other factors (financial, program comfort level, etc.) being the more likely driving force behind program choice, “geography” conventionally is just not one of them
