USASF Age Grid 2026-2027: All Star Cheer Levels, Cheer Age Grid and the Division Birth Years That Decide Your Roster.

All star cheer levels and age divisions in the Elite tier

This is the tier most people mean when they say all star. It runs Levels 1 through 7 and it is where Worlds bids live. Every division below is a club division, meaning the athletes are members of your USASF member club and appear on your official roster.

Swipe sideways to see the full table

Not every level is offered in every age division, and that is deliberate. Tiny is a Level 1 division only. Mini stops at Level 2. Junior is the only club age division that reaches Level 6. The grid is described by the USASF as a menu of divisions an event producer may offer, so a division existing on paper does not guarantee anyone is running it at the competition you are registering for. Check the event producer division list before you build a team around a level.

One structural note about the two coed lines. Senior Coed at Levels 3, 4, 4.2 and 5, and Senior Open Coed at Levels 4 and 5, are the only guaranteed stand alone coed divisions in the Elite tier. Junior 5 and Junior 6 may be split into coed and all girl when there are enough teams. Everywhere else in this tier, and everywhere in Prep and Novice, teams are combined female and male.

Elite Senior stops at 2014. Prep and Novice Senior reach 2015.

This is the single most useful thing on this page and it is almost never mentioned, because the three tiers live on three different pages of the grid and nobody reads them side by side. An athlete born in 2015 can compete Senior in Prep and in Novice. She cannot compete Senior in Elite. In Elite she belongs in Junior, which runs to 2018 and therefore contains athletes three years younger than her.

The Tiny column matters just as much for a newer program. Novice Tiny reaches down to 2023 and starts at three athletes, so it is the only 2026-2027 all star division that will take a group of three preschoolers. Elite and Prep Tiny need five athletes born 2019 to 2021. If you are building a first Tiny team out of whoever the parents bring on a Tuesday night, Novice is not a consolation tier, it is the only tier that fits.

The Novice tier carries one more thing worth money. The USASF is offering a Novice Select option to all member clubs that supplies music, a framework of a routine and a skill list to choose from, created explicitly to reduce music and choreography fees for newer coaches. Set that against published cheerleading music prices, where a custom 2:30 mix starts around $699, and a new gym running two Novice teams is looking at a four figure saving in its first season.

Which age divisions exist at each Prep and Novice level

Prep levels are written in an X.Y format that confuses every parent and half the coaches. The first figure is the building rules, covering stunts, pyramids and dismounts. The second is the tumbling rules. Level 2.1 means Level 2 building with Level 1 tumbling, which is exactly the combination most recreational athletes actually have, and it is why Prep exists.

Notice the pattern across both tiers: each level up removes the youngest age division. That is the grid quietly enforcing a development pathway, and it is the reason a gym cannot simply promote a strong Mini group to Level 3. There is no Mini Level 3 division to promote them into. Plan the cheerleading levels an athlete will pass through against her age, not just her skills.

Two birth years are cut in half, and June 1 is the knife

Most divisions are stated as clean birth years. Two are not. For 2026-2027 the 2007 and 2009 columns are split at May 31 and June 1, which is the same date the membership year turns over. An athlete born on May 20, 2007 and an athlete born on July 20, 2007 are in the same school grade, trained together since Mini, and are not eligible for the same Elite Senior team.

The adult athlete rule is the one that creates a real administrative deadline rather than a placement question. If a senior on your roster turns 18 before June 1, her membership is not a payment, it is a screening process with a clearance you have to wait for. Programs that treat every athlete renewal as one identical June task get surprised by this, usually in the week a registration closes.

U16, U18 and Open: the International side of the grid

International is an Elite tier group with its own age divisions and a minimum team size that is three times the club minimum. A gym cannot drift into these divisions with a small squad.

Two splitting rules apply here and they cut in opposite directions. In non Worlds International, teams of different sizes from the same club may request not to compete against each other, as long as every team from that club agrees. In Worlds divisions, teams from the same club will not be split and must compete against each other. A multi team gym chasing a bid should know which of those it is walking into before it registers.

126 Elite athletes ends your Division II season, and quitters still count

Division I and Division II are not about team size. They are about how big your club is, measured in Elite athletes, and the counting rules are stricter than most owners assume. Once a club reaches 126 Elite athletes it is no longer eligible for Division II, and it competes Division I for the remainder of that season.

The rostering rules that sit behind the age grid

Age eligibility decides which divisions an athlete may enter. These rules decide how many of them she may actually be on, and they are where a season gets expensive if you get them wrong at registration rather than at the event.

The temporary replacement rule is worth reading twice because it is the only relief valve in the tier system and it is written narrowly. It exists for injury, illness and genuine emergencies discovered inside two days of the event. It is not a way to fill a Prep team with Elite athletes because registration numbers came in low, and requests are not automatically granted.

Small, Medium and Large, and why 23 athletes is a decision

After the age division is settled, event producers split by team size when there are enough teams registered to make the split competitive. The thresholds are fixed, which means the number of athletes you carry is a strategic choice rather than an administrative one.

Twenty two is the last Small number. A coach who takes a twenty third athlete because a family begged has moved the team into Medium, where it will be judged against squads built to be Medium from July. Splits only happen when at least two teams register in each resulting division, so a thin regional may put you back with everyone anyway. Divisions can also be split further into Group A and Group B once ten or more teams land in one division.

How to roster a 150 athlete season without a division violation

The grid is not hard to read. It is hard to apply a hundred and fifty times, in June, against a spreadsheet where half the birth dates were typed by a parent on a phone. Every eligibility mistake this sport produces comes from the same four places.

That is exactly what roster and attendance tracking is for: birth year captured once at signup, division eligibility derived from it rather than retyped, crossover counts visible per event, and the athletes who left still on the books where the Division I count needs them. It is the same discipline that makes cheerleading tryouts produce teams you can actually register, because a scored athlete with no birth year is a placement you cannot finish. Separately, budget the membership side early: the USASF membership cost for a club, its coaches and every athlete lands on the same June 1 clock as this grid.

Keep building the season