Quick answer: a score sheet is the official document an event producer uses to score a routine. It breaks the routine into categories - typically building (stunts, pyramids, tosses), tumbling and jumps, and the overall routine - and scores each one on difficulty and execution, before subtracting deductions. Coaches usually receive the completed sheets after a competition.
How a Typical All Star Score Sheet Is Organised
Layouts differ between event producers, but many All Star sheets - including the Varsity-led United Scoring System used at many US events - follow a similar shape:
| Section | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Building | Stunts, pyramids and tosses - difficulty and execution for each |
| Tumbling | Standing and running tumbling, often with jumps - difficulty and execution |
| Overall | Dance, formations and transitions, routine creativity and overall impression |
| Deductions | Falls, bobbles, boundary and time violations, recorded by deduction officials |
| Legality | Safety violations, checked by safety judges |
The final score is the total of the category scores minus any deductions.
What Each Category Typically Rewards
Within each category, score sheets usually separate:
- Difficulty - how hard the skills are, how many athletes perform them, and the variety and connections used;
- Execution or technique - how cleanly, correctly and in sync the skills are performed.
The overall section rewards things that run across the whole routine. For example, the United Scoring System's 2025–26 overall sheet includes formations and transitions (scored by starting at full marks and taking points off for each formation or transition that isn't precise) and routine creativity (an average of the building, tumbling and overall judges' opinions).
Why Score Sheets Differ Between Events
Each event producer publishes its own score sheets, rubrics and deduction system, with different categories, point values and terminology, and most update them every season. That's a major reason the same routine can score differently at different events - and why this site explains concepts rather than quoting point values as universal.
How to Read a Score Sheet
If you get to see a score sheet, the most useful things to look at are:
- Category scores - which parts of the routine earned the most and least.
- Difficulty vs execution in each category - is the team losing points by not doing enough, or by not doing it cleanly enough?
- Deductions - what they were for, and when in the routine they happened.
- Comparisons within the division - how the team's category scores compare with the teams placed above.
Coaches use exactly this to decide what to change before the next competition.
Related Terms
See Judges, How Is Competitive Cheer Scored?, and try our Interactive Score Sheet to see how the pieces interact - built with illustrative numbers, not a real event's figures.
Checked against: USASF All Star Cheer Rules and Cheer Age Grid, 2026–27 (updated 18 May 2026) on 15 October 2026