Sometimes as parents we don't "get" why things are scored as they are. Maybe people fell but had WAY more difficulty that as parents we just didn't get how that worked in a score sheet. So I take my tips from the coaches about whether it was fair or not ( by that either talking with them or just watching their reactions). I've seen them seriously surprised a few times but on at least two blatant ones they did the same thing. At one EP the team not only won but were level champions and this was in December. In April they went back to that EP and had really increased difficulty in those 4 months over what they'd even been before. They hit just as clean and scored significantly lower...with a much harder routine...4 months after that EP had them as level champs. The coach met with the head judge immediately on Saturday and plead his case for how it could even be possible to score the same execution lower when the difficulty was significantly increased.
The other one was a big debacle with an independent EP that has their own scoring system. We didn't get credit for things we did and our opposition got credit for things they didn't do. Basically they scored us backwards. He met with them there for 45 minutes on Saturday as well. Even the other team coaches couldn't understand how they were ahead. It was an easy mistake, simple fix, just swap the scores. Um, no. We ended up on Sunday having to essentially beat ourselves - which we did but not by enought to beat ourselves so we finished second.
Our coaches will fight for our kids when something is blatant In a score sheet that isn't right, and they'll usually do it on the spot if the competition is still going on. In both of these cases, it didn't do much good for our kids, but as a parent I appreciate the fact they fought for my kids. Another EP last year had disastrous warm ups and some junky scoring I don't know details on, but i know the coaches weren't happy with it as well.
We started our gym with 98 kids, we went to 160 or so last year and this year were over 250 by my estimate (from 5 to 10 teams over three years) so when fighting for our kids didn't get them results....they did it the old fashioned capitalist way....
....those competitions haven't seen a cent from our program since. And for a program that is growing like wildfire and up and coming in our area, I think that's what needs to happen.
As a coach, advocate for your kids and if that doesn't get you some professional resolution, take your money somewhere else...you probably
Won't be the only one who does it which is why some of these events are getting smaller, not larger.