All-Star Gymnastics Struggles With Accurate Scoring

[King]

When Olympic athletes succeed but judges fail – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

Good article. Thoughts?

 

[MomOf2ThatsMe]

This just goes to prove that a whole panel of judges seemingly cannot accurately judge the routine of a single athlete on the floor. Why do we expect our judges to be able to score 20, 30 or even 36 on the floor properly? It is no secret that most know they cannot, evidenced by the amount of teams with back-row tuck jumps on the floor when the front 2/3 of the team is doing standing back tucks etc. They wouldn't be doing it if it didn't work. Creativity is good, yes. Having good competition is as well. However, when you have so many people on the floor that you can hide your problems, it really is a detriment to the integrity of the sport. As is the super-secretive scoring. In fact, I can't think of another sport where the scores are a secret. Interesting.

 

[cheerKT]

Gymnastics wise, I wish the judges would step up and reward perfection. It's almost like a competition to see who is the best judge by seeing who can hunt down and find more deductions. Finding deductions doesn't make you a good judge, accurate scoring does. If they were close to perfection (IE McKayla Maroney's vault) then score them such. Of course I'm no trained gymnastics judge but almost 3 tenths on that vault in team finals was absolutely crazy.

 

[xomckenzieee]

Judging is always part of everyone's argument as to if we're really a sport or not. In most sports a goal is a goal and a race is a race. In the nature of cheerleading and gymnastics, judging can be biased whether we like it or not. I do believe cheerleading could potentially benefit from video review and that a mass scoring system with points and difficulty does need to be instated for every event and competition to help unify everything. That's one of the big issues with cheerleading, a lot of event owners are in it for the money and not the sport. We need unity.

 

[Hodiestoe]

I am a national trampoline judge and can honestly say subjective judging is so hard even when you have a set criteria for each move. I do feel that this article hit it on the head and when that coach says gymnastics is like a 95m and a 105m race - I think that is totally true. The discussions that go on at the judging desk would send the competitors :eek: I have judged on panels where people have blinked and missed a move and guesstimated the score!

To have only 3 appeals in the Olympics for gymnastics is testament to how good those judges are., I wouldn't like to have done it. Now I did arm chair judge and that was hard enough without the added pressure of actually having to do it live ;)

I couldn't even begin to imagine how hard it would be to judge a team of 36 at an Olympic standard :eek: I could see how it could work if it was judged more on execution rather than difficulty but even that that would be mighty hard!

 

[newcheerdad]

I think the article illustrates a couple of things that apply to cheer:

1. Judging is hard, even at the highest levels. Trained judges are a must, even if that costs more and cuts into the bottom line.
2. You need video review of difficulty at every competition where it's economically feasible. It's important to get it right.
3. You need scoring to be as uniform and transparent as possible. That's the only way things get better. A million different secretive scoresheets doesn't help the sport.

 

[ASCheerMan]

... one of the big issues with cheerleading, a lot of event owners are in it for the money and not the sport. We need unity.

Out of curiosity, what evidence led you to believe so many event producers are 'in it for the money?' Personally, I feel like that's the scapegoat excuse people use to define a business's motivation for decisions they don't agree with--ANY business. Even when I worked in a gym, I'd overhear parents complain and finish their thought with: she's just in it for the money.
For most EP's and Coaches, I can honestly say we aren't in it for the money. Their is a more important life lessons happening in our sport Now MONEY IS THE REASON WE CAN AFFORD TO PRODUCE THESE LIFE LESSONS, but hardly the reason for all of us to dedicate our time to all star cheer.
I just had two put my 2 cents in. Thanks a mil!

 

[yojaehs]

#1 I would love for cheer to have an inquiry system
#2 Code of Points needs to happen or inquiries would be useless
#3 As much as I am HUGELY in favor of "getting it right" in every case possible, accidents happen and mistakes are made HOWEVER how many times to the judges get it right!? They get it right more times than not and that is not realized by many.

 

[xomckenzieee]

Out of curiosity, what evidence led you to believe so many event producers are 'in it for the money?' Personally, I feel like that's the scapegoat excuse people use to define a business's motivation for decisions they don't agree with--ANY business. Even when I worked in a gym, I'd overhear parents complain and finish their thought with: she's just in it for the money.
For most EP's and Coaches, I can honestly say we aren't in it for the money. Their is a more important life lessons happening in our sport Now MONEY IS THE REASON WE CAN AFFORD TO PRODUCE THESE LIFE LESSONS, but hardly the reason for all of us to dedicate our time to all star cheer.
I just had two put my 2 cents in. Thanks a mil!

I'm not saying all are but in any business you have people that could care less what happens, they just want to make money. Putting the money aside, event planners do need a unified system to keep cheerleading fair and that can't happen with the few corrupt ones there are. I cheered and coached long enough to know that not every EP out there has this devoted love of cheerleading.

 

[Rudags]

Out of curiosity, what evidence led you to believe so many event producers are 'in it for the money?' Personally, I feel like that's the scapegoat excuse people use to define a business's motivation for decisions they don't agree with--ANY business. Even when I worked in a gym, I'd overhear parents complain and finish their thought with: she's just in it for the money.
For most EP's and Coaches, I can honestly say we aren't in it for the money. Their is a more important life lessons happening in our sport Now MONEY IS THE REASON WE CAN AFFORD TO PRODUCE THESE LIFE LESSONS, but hardly the reason for all of us to dedicate our time to all star cheer.
I just had two put my 2 cents in. Thanks a mil!

Justin, as someone said in a previous response, its not ALL judges. I really only have ONE example, but I figure if I have one, then others have lots of "ones" too. I was at a UCA competition back in December of 2010. There were HUGE errors in our stunting categories that I found (after awards, mind you). I went up to yell, i mean, politely talk to the judges and the stunting judge was right there. The scoring issues I had were regarding my Senior 4 and Coed 5 teams. I explained that our Level 4 had switch ups and full ups, and that we should have been in a higher range (same for my Level 5 range). She apologized and said (nearly an exact quote) "I'm so sorry. I am just a High School coach. I haven't judged before. Talk to _____" (forget her name). I realize UCA was possibly in a bind to get a judge for this very small, regional event. But when we hit a solid and clean routine, and get beat by a team who was missing someone due to weather and marked their pyramid and half their stunts, with several touchdowns - I was bitter.

Anyway, as I said, I realize this is probably an isolated incident, but it happened.

I also know when I was younger and untrained, I was asked to judge events because they were short on staff. I had no idea what I was doing. While I was judging a certain category and knew enough of who's stunts were the best and the worst, I still wasn't trained. Again, I feel if it happened to me, it may happen more than that.

 

[ASCheerMan]

I'm not saying all are but in any business you have people that could care less what happens, they just want to make money. Putting the money aside, event planners do need a unified system to keep cheerleading fair and that can't happen with the few corrupt ones there are. I cheered and coached long enough to know that not every EP out there has this devoted love of cheerleading.

I agree with what you are stating in that with any industry, there are people that just want to make money. Event Producers, Coaches, Gym Owners-many are out there. I'm just trying to understand the correlation between needing a unified system and the problem being event producers are in it for the money... Normally, I would debate with you that 'the money' isn't the motivation behind the EP's action in question, but I can't tell what action in question is or what fact drove you to reference the EP's that are in it for the money. Are you saying we don't have a unified system yet because event producers are in it for the money?? Or that they are too busy making money to think of it as a sport??
Rudags, I'm confused as to the point you are making. In your poor UCA experience, are you speculating that you had the judge you had because UCA didn't want to spend money?
Sorry, I'm even more slow tonight than usual :)

 

[Rudags]

Rudags, I'm confused as to the point you are making. In your poor UCA experience, are you speculating that you had the judge you had because UCA didn't want to spend money?
Sorry, I'm even more slow tonight than usual :)

I'm not saying anything specifically because I was not in charge of this competition. I am saying that UCA hiring a High School coach that has never judged before COULD have been related to money. It also could have been due to poor planning or various other reasons. Point is, the judging was poor, and it could have been various reasons (money being an option)

 

[tumbleyoda]

Gymnastics wise, I wish the judges would step up and reward perfection. It's almost like a competition to see who is the best judge by seeing who can hunt down and find more deductions. Finding deductions doesn't make you a good judge, accurate scoring does. If they were close to perfection (IE McKayla Maroney's vault) then score them such. Of course I'm no trained gymnastics judge but almost 3 tenths on that vault in team finals was absolutely crazy.

I know the issue gymnastics has had in the past is that once you award a perfect score, you open the floodgates for more perfect scores even if they are not technically perfect. If you go back and look at Nadia's perfect score routines you can easily find some deductions. Leg separations, stretch before landings, etc. Small stuff sure, but still a deduction. But at that time and in that setting no one had seen anything like it. Well all of a sudden the flood gates opened up it and everyone it seemed was scoring perfect 10's which eventually led to the revamping of the scoring system. I am not saying that you are wrong just filling in back story which may in the judges mind be a reason why it was not scored perfectly. Although I believe a min it was a .1 deduction if that. But I haven't judged in forever and certainly not at that level of gymnastics.

The second thing - which is where I feel cheer gets stuck sometimes - is that even though you may have an amazing degree of difficulty, that does not eliminate technique or execution deductions. The argument seems to be if it is so difficult you should overlook the execution and technique because it "hit." Of course we all have a different definition of what "hit" means so that is another discussion. Or because you were in the higher side of the max range but your skills were shaky you should still beat another team who were in the lower side of the max range yet were rock solid. Which is another reason why I posted the article.

 

[tumbleyoda]

More germane to the thread - the issues to me has always been that gymnastics has an independent judging body not connected to the EP's. They decide who are judging events not the EP's. This is determined not only by seniority but by what levels you are qualified to judge. Judges report to them and they they are contracted by the EP's through the Judging Association. if you want to Judge, you have to be certified - not just a friend of a friend, or a novice filling in because they don't have anyone else trained for that level.

In gymnastics there is a legitimate appeal process that does not make the coach look like a bad sport for having a real question about the scoring of his/her team. It is done in a timely matter and not a we will get back to you when we get back to the office on Monday/Tuesday type matter. If they are wrong they accept the blame and overturn it, no matter how it feels to the person who was in third but now is in fourth.

If and when we go to this type of model it will free the EP's up to focus on running their events better and not bogged down with judging decisions.