Competition Fee Refund Policy - PCA Events

The following 'Refund' policies apply to all PCA competitions. It is never the intent for us to "keep your money" or unfairly punish you for withdrawal, but after a certain point in the planning of any event - your extraction creates a fair amount of work (ie re formatting divisions, trophies are non-returnable, schedules are re-drafted) . NOTE: There are no refunds issued for individuals withdrawing from an event (due to injury, sickness, famiy issues, travel disruption etc)

For most PCA events, there are "Early Bird",  "On Time" , and "Late" entry payment deadlines.

1. Teams that cancel or withdraw from an event prior to the "On Time" deadline, will receive a full refund of fees paid minus a $100 administration fee.

2. Teams that cancel or withdraw from an event within the "Late" period and prior to the 1 week of item 3 below, will have 1/4 of the entry fee retained by PCA.

3. Teams that cancel or withdraw from an event within one week of the 72 hour zero refund period prior to an event* will have 1/2 of the entry fee retained by PCA. ( *10 Days prior to event)

4. Teams/athletes that cancel or withdraw from an event within 72 hours of the event or that fail to notify PCA of withdrawal from an event are not refunded any portion of their entry fee.

Special addendum

Weather - This past weekend (January 2026) , the city of Toronto received a record amount of snow which of course dropped on top of a Cheer event (ditto in Ottawa and Montreal, but slightly less accumulation). It brought up the subject of ‘When should an event be cancelled?’ and ‘when does the event producer need to pull the plug and concede to Mother Nature?’ First up: lets’s hope we don’t have to make that call.   Realistically - we cannot ‘postpone’ or reschedule an event. The travel logistics of teams, venue availability and all the thousands of sub-units associated with running a cheer event that are booked and paid for (always non-refundable), cannot be rescheduled. The very hard pill that has to be swallowed, would be that IF an event needed to be cancelled due to tremendously bad weather, road closures, train/flight cancellations etc - there is no refund and worse - there is no re-do. We will always do what is safest and most prudent but the participants must also accept that no one controls the weather and that if the worst case scenario was to happen, and PCA did need to cancel the event - there can be no refund since 99.9% of all event related services are either pre-paid and/or non-refundable as well. If the City of Guelph (Sleeman centre owner) intercedes and closes the building - then we would of course comply. And finally - any given team or school may opt to withdraw at their discretion but again, the fees are not refundable. Let’s hope this never needs to happen.