What Is an Age Grid in Cheerleading?

Quick answer: an age grid is a chart used to work out a team's overall age division from the ages of its individual athletes - usually by adding up or averaging athlete ages, or counting how many athletes fall into each age band, against a governing body's published grid.

What the Term Means

A cheer team isn't made up of athletes who are all exactly the same age. An age grid gives event organisers and governing bodies a standard method for translating a mix of individual athlete ages into one overall team age division, so that teams of genuinely comparable age ranges compete against each other.

Why Age Grids Exist

Without a standard method, teams could be built entirely from the oldest permitted athletes in a division, giving them a physical advantage over teams with a younger average age. Age grids are designed to keep age-based divisions meaningful and comparable.

How Age Grids Are Typically Used

A common approach involves totalling or averaging individual athlete ages (sometimes with extra weight given to the number of older athletes on the roster) and checking the result against a published grid to determine the team's division - for example Youth, Junior or Senior.

Division / Governing Body Differences

The exact method for calculating an age grid - and the resulting division names and age ranges - varies significantly between governing bodies and competition providers, and can change between seasons. Always check your governing body's current official age grid.

Related Terms

See What Is a Division? for how age grids combine with level to form a full competitive division.