Joe,
Just so there's no misunderstanding of what I said, I don't advocate adding spins, 4-points, slow rolls, or snaps to the Intermediate schedule. That level is all about learning to fly a fairly basic set of maneuvers without leaving the box and at that level, it's a significant challenge coming from the Sportsman level. While you might be comfortable doing a spin, snap, 4-point, or whatever, it's not appropriate to expect someone just coming out of Sportsman to do it in the confines of the box they're now required to stay in for the duration of the flight.

My time in the judge's chair tells me Intermediate is plenty difficult enough. When it becomes boring and you're consistently flying it well, it's time to move up to the challenges of Advanced.

This is always the problem faced by the Sequence Committee. Someone at or near the top of their game in their current class wants to make that class harder rather than moving up. You can't do that and make the transition from the lower class reasonable/logical. That's what I'm talking about when I say keeping an eye in the rear view mirror.

From my judging time in the D4/D5 arena, I'm confident that the difficulty level at each step is currently right where it should be. The good turnouts we've been getting the last few years in all classes tells me we're not driving/scaring anyone away at any level. It wasn't very long ago that pattern was dying out from the bottom up.

Verne Koester