Quick answer: All Star cheer emerged from around the 1980s onward, as private gyms began forming competitive cheer teams independent of any school - a format that grew rapidly through the 1990s and 2000s and now represents a major branch of the sport.
Why All Star Cheer Emerged
As competitive cheer's technical demands grew - more advanced stunts, tumbling and choreography - dedicated gyms began forming teams built purely around training and competing, rather than combining cheer with sideline support for a school's other sports. This let athletes train year-round with a much sharper competitive focus than a typical school program allowed.
Early Growth
Through the 1980s and 1990s, All Star gyms and teams grew steadily in the United States, supported by the same competition organisations and training camps that had helped standardise cheer technique more broadly. See How Did Competitive Cheer Develop? for the wider context this growth happened within.
Standardisation
As All Star cheer expanded, the need for consistent levels, rules and scoring across many independent gyms became clear, leading to the formation of dedicated governing structures for the format - see What Is All Star Cheer? for how today's level and division system works, and History of the International Cheer Union for the international governing body that eventually formed.
All Star Cheer Today
All Star cheer is now a major branch of competitive cheerleading worldwide, with gyms fielding multiple teams across a wide range of levels and age groups, and a season structure built around qualifying competitions and major end-of-season championship events.
A Note on Dates and Sources
Precise founding dates and milestones for specific organisations vary between sources. Where precision matters to you, we recommend cross-checking against a dedicated historical or organisational source - see our sources page.