What Is Synchronisation in Cheer Scoring?

Quick answer: synchronisation is how precisely a team performs together - every athlete hitting the same position, at the same angle, on the same count. It's one of the most visible parts of cheer, and it's judged as part of execution: being out of sync costs execution credit rather than counting as a deduction.

What the Term Means

Cheer is performed in close visual unison. Synchronisation (often shortened to "sync" or called "timing") covers both timing - doing things at the same moment - and matching - doing them the same way, with the same arm angles, jump heights and body positions. Teams build synchronisation by counting everything in 8-counts, so every athlete knows exactly which count each move lands on.

Where Judges See It Most

• Jumps - every athlete leaving the floor, hitting the shape and landing together.
• Motions and dance - matching arm angles and hitting each motion on the count.
• Tumbling - athletes in the same pass moving through each skill at the same speed and landing together.
• Stunts - every stunt group loading, extending and cradling on the same count, so the stunts look like one.
• Transitions - the whole team moving between formations together.

How It Affects a Score

Even excellent individual skills look messy when the team isn't together. A toe touch landed a fraction of a second apart across the team reads as an error from the judges' panel, however good each individual jump was. Because synchronisation is part of execution, it affects almost every category on the score sheet.

Synchronisation vs Deductions

Being out of sync is not a deduction. Deductions are reserved for defined errors such as falls, bobbles and rule violations. Poor synchronisation lowers execution scores instead - which is why a team can hit zero and still score lower than a cleaner, sharper team.

Common Examples

• One or two athletes visibly early or late in a jump sequence.
• Stunt groups extending one after another instead of together.
• Arms at slightly different angles in a high V or T.
• Tumblers in the same pass landing at different times.

Scoring-System Differences

Some score sheets list synchronisation as its own line item; others fold it into execution or technique for each category. Either way, it affects almost every part of the score.

Related Terms

See Execution, Technique and the scoring overview.