What Is Difficulty in Cheer Scoring?

Quick answer: difficulty is the judged value of how technically demanding a routine's skills are - but it isn't only about the hardest skill. Score sheets also reward how many athletes perform a skill, the variety of skills, and how skills are connected. Difficulty is scored separately from how cleanly the skills are performed.

What Makes a Routine More Difficult

Although each event producer's score sheet differs, difficulty generally depends on:

• The skills themselves - an extended liberty is harder than a prep; a full is harder than a layout.
• How many athletes perform them - a standing back handspring by every athlete is worth more than the same skill by a few. Many score sheets set targets for the proportion of the team performing a skill.
• Variety - different stunt positions, jumps or tumbling skills, rather than repeating one.
• Connections and combinations - connected jumps, tumbling passes with more skills, and stunt transitions that flow from one position to the next.
• Transitions and creativity in stunts and pyramids - how the team moves between positions, not just where it ends up.

Difficulty and the Level Rules

The level rules set the ceiling: a team can only perform skills allowed at its level, and harder skills aren't allowed at lower levels at all. So difficulty is judged within a level. A Level 2 team isn't compared with a Level 4 team; it's compared with other Level 2 teams on how much of the Level 2 skill set it performs, by how many athletes, and how well.

How It Affects a Routine

Because difficulty is scored separately from execution, teams face a real strategic choice: attempt harder skills for more difficulty credit, or choose skills the team can perform consistently. Falls and bobbles cost deductions on top of lost execution, so a skill that only hits half the time is often a bad trade. Many coaches aim for "maxing out" difficulty with skills the whole team can hit reliably.

What Judges Evaluate

Judges assess difficulty category by category - stunts, pyramids, tosses, standing tumbling, running tumbling and jumps - so a team can be strong in one area and weaker in another. Coaches read the category scores on the score sheet to see where adding difficulty would help most.

Difficulty vs Execution

A high-difficulty skill performed poorly may score similarly to, or worse than, an easier skill performed cleanly once execution and deductions are counted. Try it yourself in our interactive score sheet.

Scoring-System Differences

Exactly how difficulty is calculated and weighted varies between event producers and changes every season. Always check the score sheet used at your event.

Related Terms

See Execution for the other half of the trade-off, and the scoring overview.