Do judges really hold back higher scores in the beginning of the meet?

[GetaGrip]

Our coach lets us each pick an event to go first on, and then lets us compete. I haven't seen that the later scores are better, but if it was true it would probably be because of the "best for last" method. That was what my old gym used to do. They would start with the worst and work their way up to the best. It seems like a decent idea but when it comes down to the gymnasts its depressing to be first all the time.

 

[Granny Smith]

I agree with what Flippers Mom said. There is strategy involved and if the coaches have a say in the order that the girls compete in a squad (knowing that this is not always the case) I can basically tell where my dd will fall. Her team has very strong vaulters and dd is not one of them. I'd rather her go first or at least before the strong vaulters. To have the girls who are hitting the 9.5s go then my kid who a 9.1 is equivalent to a 10.0 in our book, not good. When the coaches have say, my dd will always go before those 9.5 type girls. Then it's just the reverse on bars, where my dd will tend to go last where as her teammates tend to go before her. I don't look at it as the coaches saving the best for last, more so the best routine goes last because no one really wants to follow that awesome routine if they are not up to the same standard. It's not a bad thing and I recognize my dd's strengths and weaknesses, as does she. She wants to go 1st on vault and actually wants to go first on beam, just to get beam done.

As for judging, that's always interesting. I think a great routine, regardless of where it falls, will still be a great routine but if it's the 1st routine, in the 1st flight of a meet it might end up 3rd place rather than 1st. I will say I went to the Level 8 Regional meet for our area this year to help cheer on some of dd's teammates and the one girl from dd's gym was the 2nd girl to go on floor in the 1st flight and she still ended up winning floor. Obviously, she set the standard for the meet and no one else compared to her.

I thought the overall scoring for my dd's L9 Regional meet was very low, consistently throughout the entire session. 9.3s were winning events. Where as other regions Regional meets 9.3s weren't even placing. Scoring is so subjective, but at least if it is consistent then you can accept it. This is what will make Westerns/Easterns so interesting when all of these regions come together and you actually see where the girls fall under all the same judging. Because when you just look up scores, it's like comparing apples to oranges.....

 

[Gymnaesa]

I've noticed that, when our coaches put the girls in order to compete at a meet, they tend to "save the best for last" but I have no idea why. In my mind, it would be a self-fulfilling prophesy. The girls KNOW the coach arranges them this way (at least by age 8 or 9 they do), so going last in the event would be a vote of confidence from the coaches, wheras if you're in the first couple of girls to compete, you know that the coaches don't expect you to do as well. I would think that would effect your performance to a certain degree. Though I know my daughter did enjoy the fact that she was placed later and later in the line-up as the season continued!

As for whether or not judges are reluctant to give out high scores early in the meet, I have no idea. I would imagine that the good judges try to stick as closely to the code of points as possible without paying attention to what gym they're from or what rotation they're on. But who knows?

First I will answer as a USAG-Accredited judge:
Judges absolutely do NOT "hold back" higher scores. We have an obligation to score routines consistently and rank them appropriately. This does not mean we underscore a good routine. This "holding back" is a gross misinterpretation of a technique used to help ensure that we won't be judging ourselves unnecessarily into the "10.00" corner. For example, scores of routines at an unsanctioned competition will be relatively higher compared to the same routines competed at a sanctioned event. Why? Many unsanctioned gymnasts (such as those that compete in the Amerikids program) are "recreational-competitive" gymnasts. The overall quality of gymnastics found at these meets is substantially lower than that of a sanctioned competition due to substantially less training hours, multi-sport participation, et cetera. Judges know this coming into the event -- so instead of killing a child's morale with the "real" scores (which is subjective to begin with) and handing out 5.0s and 6.0s left and right, a judge will use his or her experience to gauge the overall competition and judge inside a range appropriate to it. A judge's adherence to maximum deductions is going to be more likely to be found at a State Meet in Southern California than an unsanctioned meet in Missouri or Iowa. (One example o of how this is achieved: Many deductions are not flat deductions, they are marked as "up to" a specific deduction. This gives judges the ability to not only be more or less lenient on some execution errors on the event as a whole, but enables them to have some room to compare and contrast routines and skills of different athletes and deduct appropriately.) The ranking of the athletes is the more important thing to look at. Ask yourself; is the ranking of athletes at a particular event consistent? I think you'll find in most cases, the gymnast with the higher quality routine is ranked higher. Any discrepancy against what your impression was of a routine as a parent/coach as compared to the impression received by the judge is what makes this sport interesting.

As a Coach:
Our gym does not order our athletes from weakest to strongest. In fact, we prefer our more consistent athletes to begin on an event. We THEN tend to build up to our strongest performer (which generally places them in the middle.) Then we finish with our less consistent/weak routines. It keeps our strongest event performers from observing falls/wobbles and large errors that could potentially affect their performance and hurt our team scores. This is a meet strategy that had very little, if at all, to do with "judging psyche". In fact the advantage to this is much greater than an ascending order (which, IMHO is a superstitious non-strategy employed by coaches with little forethought or experience.)

As a Mom:

It is important to me to de-emphasize the importance of the subjective factors of our sport; line up and scores being two big ones. If my child enjoys the sport, enjoys the challenge of competition and puts forth her best effort given a particular set of circumstances -- I am a happy mom. Your child is learning how to win and lose with grace; your child is learning the direct effects of hard work, your child is learning how to perform under pressure, your child is learning how to persevere through good performances and bad. The lessons your children are learning in our great sport are some of the most character-building lessons they will learn in their lifetimes. Then parents (and even some coaches) devalue these learning experiences by getting angry at the judges, the coaches, the more naturally-talented athlete, their own gymnast...

Just my two cents, and first post on this forum ever. Have a happy holiday weekend!

 

[gymcoach34]

First I will answer as a USAG-Accredited judge:
Judges absolutely do NOT "hold back" higher scores. We have an obligation to score routines consistently and rank them appropriately. This does not mean we underscore a good routine. This "holding back" is a gross misinterpretation of a technique used to help ensure that we won't be judging ourselves unnecessarily into the "10.00" corner. For example, scores of routines at an unsanctioned competition will be relatively higher compared to the same routines competed at a sanctioned event. Why? Many unsanctioned gymnasts (such as those that compete in the Amerikids program) are "recreational-competitive" gymnasts. The overall quality of gymnastics found at these meets is substantially lower than that of a sanctioned competition due to substantially less training hours, multi-sport participation, et cetera. Judges know this coming into the event -- so instead of killing a child's morale with the "real" scores (which is subjective to begin with) and handing out 5.0s and 6.0s left and right, a judge will use his or her experience to gauge the overall competition and judge inside a range appropriate to it. A judge's adherence to maximum deductions is going to be more likely to be found at a State Meet in Southern California than an unsanctioned meet in Missouri or Iowa. (One example o of how this is achieved: Many deductions are not flat deductions, they are marked as "up to" a specific deduction. This gives judges the ability to not only be more or less lenient on some execution errors on the event as a whole, but enables them to have some room to compare and contrast routines and skills of different athletes and deduct appropriately.) The ranking of the athletes is the more important thing to look at. Ask yourself; is the ranking of athletes at a particular event consistent? I think you'll find in most cases, the gymnast with the higher quality routine is ranked higher. Any discrepancy against what your impression was of a routine as a parent/coach as compared to the impression received by the judge is what makes this sport interesting.

As a Coach:
Our gym does not order our athletes from weakest to strongest. In fact, we prefer our more consistent athletes to begin on an event. We THEN tend to build up to our strongest performer (which generally places them in the middle.) Then we finish with our less consistent/weak routines. It keeps our strongest event performers from observing falls/wobbles and large errors that could potentially affect their performance and hurt our team scores. This is a meet strategy that had very little, if at all, to do with "judging psyche". In fact the advantage to this is much greater than an ascending order (which, IMHO is a superstitious non-strategy employed by coaches with little forethought or experience.)

As a Mom:

It is important to me to de-emphasize the importance of the subjective factors of our sport; line up and scores being two big ones. If my child enjoys the sport, enjoys the challenge of competition and puts forth her best effort given a particular set of circumstances -- I am a happy mom. Your child is learning how to win and lose with grace; your child is learning the direct effects of hard work, your child is learning how to perform under pressure, your child is learning how to persevere through good performances and bad. The lessons your children are learning in our great sport are some of the most character-building lessons they will learn in their lifetimes. Then parents (and even some coaches) devalue these learning experiences by getting angry at the judges, the coaches, the more naturally-talented athlete, their own gymnast...

Just my two cents, and first post on this forum ever. Have a happy holiday weekend!

Wow, may have been your 1st post-but it was a great one! Can I clone you as a gym mom???

 

[Deleted member D3987]

well, that's all good and all but if Gymnaesa is true to her post she is the ONLY judge practicing what she posted. and you guys couldn't give a score above 9.8 if your life depended on it. unless you're in Texas, of course. or 1 vaulter at a 10.0 a handful of times in illinois. at bars, beam and floor you can't even bingo your start values most of the time. you have point spreads of over a point between you. in fact, some of you can't read the start values at vault. the start value is posted for you and some of you don't know what you're looking at. some of you don't know the difference between a triple and double full. in 2012 no less. you don't know a good sheep jump from a bad one. what constitutes a solid ring jump and what doesn't. and if i'm not right then there is no longer any need for connie maloney.

you cheat. shayla worley last year on beam. flies off the side on her double full dismount. and IT did not receive value cause it was crap. and then she fell on her hands and knees on the hard floor NEXT to the mat. she went 9.75. a certain judge from florida blatantly cheated.

level 10 nationals last year. the most beautiful y2 was performed by a girl from Minnesota and she lawn jarts the landing. goes 9.85. later, a girl performs y1 and goes 9.95. and with a small hop.

i could go on ad nauseam but won't. and no disrespect to you. the system for girls is broke. and so are the judges. boys judging has got it right. they always have. and i'm a former brevet back in the day. my wife is former brevet and doesn't judge. doesn't want to get in fights and arguments over some of the crap that you all invariably debate when you 'conference'. so then, tell everyone here at this site why there is any need for a 'conference' when you're all so effective and evenly trained at what you do. you ever see the men conference?

and for all you said about not hammering non-sanctioned amerikids, maybe you should practice what you preach when you have 16 year old level 8's in front of you and you send them home feeling worthless. because you don't "want to hold back scores". what a crock. and by the way, you're not supposed to "rank" the gymnasts. yet you do it anyway.

i better stop now. you'll accuse me of being the most rude person you have ever met. then i'll have to yikes myself. and maybe i'll get banned. but at least i told the truth...

and the hats you wear as coach and mom are honorable. and i sincerely welcome you to CB.

eta: i forgot 1 that irks me to no end. when allowed in a club rotation, and the line ups for college, coaches still stack the line ups. i do it too when i'm entered as a team. put your worst routine up last. and if it hits it WILL score higher than if it went first up. and more often than not it will beat the 1st one up in the line up. this fact is irrefutable. i just don't have 10 hours to post up just all the routines from THIS year that are available on youtube if someone knows what they're looking at, what the routines are and who the teams are.

 

[gymgurl]

Can't say anything about judging here as I am not a judge but we don't ever choose the line up and it is generally alphabetical order and then if we are lucky the judges rotate positions and ask who went first and then put them at the end and the second girl goes first. Normally its just alphabetical leaving me always close to the end

 

[Esoteric]

It was so easy to predict who the last 3 gymmies to perform each event would be this past season. Dd was always last on bars and 2nd or 3rd to last on beam and floor and mid pack on vault. All the kiddos- these are 7-10 yo primarily, knew why, and my heart broke for the girls who were always up first. I don't get it, I don't agree with it, but it is how our gym does it. The HC of the gym is also a judge, and from what I understand, she agrees with the putting your consistently strong athletes last on each event. The bleachers are full of parents chattering about the judging always saving high scores for the end of each rotation. Some even chatter about certain gyms or body types being given "special" consideration. I know for a fact that at one meet my daughter got an undeserved 1st place on bars. She had a very obvious error. She knew it, coach knew it, but apparently the judges gave her the benefit of the doubt because she was the reigning state champion. I have sat at the score table during home meets and have listened to one judge "convince" another to adjust their score because the spread was too large. This was the exception, not the rule- but the fact that it happened was bizarre. It just helps me as a parent to remember to NEVER focus on scores or placements when conversing with my child. (Although I will admit I brag to my own friends about dd's placements from time to time. )

 

[profmom]

When the coaches set the lineups, my DD is very close to or at the beginning, and at 10, she's old enough and experienced enough to know what that means. But we try not to emphasize scores and placements all that much, and she does appreciate that she's not being judged immediately after her strongest teammates.

I'm usually on board with not taking the scores too seriously, and usually the ordinals, if not the scores, make sense to me. But there was one time this season when I seriously almost lost it at a meet. The only time this has ever happened. DD performed a clean L6 beam routine -- it wasn't really great, but there were no major wobbles, she stuck everything nicely, and she had a very good dismount. She got a very low 8. At the time I was shocked, but I got really, really angry later on when girls from . . . let's just say another team with different leos . . . were getting high 8s and low 9s with falls and much poorer form dismounts. Sure, I can see a routine with a fall beating a stuck routine here and there, but this was not what was going on in my eyes. One girl with two frigging falls got a higher score than DD, and it wasn't a matter of her having done everything else utterly brilliantly (i.e., she missed the beam with both feet on the BWO, had multiple balance checks, etc.). It still makes me angry just thinking about it. But, as I tell myself -- that's gymnastics. I hope those two judges are not at states, and if they are, I hope that the team with those leos goes before us, because it's hard to explain what happened to DD (and to a lesser degree to some of her teammates) without a theory that high scores were being held back both on individual girls and on teams on the whole. (And no, I am not yet enough of a CGM to have remembered either of their names.)

I'm still pretty new to the world of MAG and don't yet feel confident in playing guess the score, but on the whole, my DS seems to score better when he does better routines. (Yeah, I know that's crazy talk.) Even with 15 points -- up to 16 with the bonuses on most events -- for the judges to play with, the range of possible/predictable scores just seems tighter. Dunno's rant intrigues me.

Conversations like this make me really glad that my DS is done competing for the year and my DD is just about to the end. Uptraining is so much more fun for them to do and me to watch by this point in the year!

 

[gymgal]

Well, dunno... Don't hold anything back!

We are prep op and in most meets, the girls are randomly listed. The 1st up changes for each event and is predetermined before the meet. I have seen coaches change the order sometimes, particularly on bars and vt, when equipment adjusting is needed.

As for judging, It is what it is....

 

[AlexsGymmyMom]

I do have to agree that at most meets our girls are lined up by how the coaches feel they will score. My DD has gone last on bars at every meet this season and has consistently scored higher than her teammates. She is usually at the beginning on vault and beam and she usually has one of the lowest scores on those 2 events. And as the season has progressed she has moved closer to the end of the line-up on floor.
Then you have the girl on our team that LOVES to go first on everything. She asks the coaches to let her go first. It drives her mom CRAZY!!
It has also been my experience that whatever event is first in the rotation for our team the scores seem lower than the last rotation.

 

[skschlag]

Dunno- You may think boys have it right, but at the JO level, sometimes I wonder. Saw a boy get a 16 on a pbar routine at Level6... Saw a kid fall on pommel and get a 15.7. Watched a kid do a bent arm kip, piked free hip circle, and step on the landing on high bar (BIG step) and score a 15.8. (all same gym) So, I do wonder soemtimes about how the judging works. We just tell our kids that they can only do their best, and not worry about it!

Our coach sometimes does it "best last" usually at state/regionals. Sometimes he asks the boys who wants to go first, etc. One meet, on high bar for our team, the scores literally went 14.4, 14.5, 14.6, 14.7, 14.8, 15. We were cracking up! In that order too.

I think any judged sport is goign to have flaws.

 

[wallinbl]

Current gym goes by the alphabet most of the time, but when forced to split the team into different rotations, they'll definitely put the better girls into a group. The HC is definitely paranoid about the girls watching too many of their teammates fall on beam while waiting to go. He feels it is contagious. We've even seen another gym in the state that has their girls who are waiting face away from the beam and not watch.

Previous gym definitely felt there was a strategy around sequence. They'd put 2 consistent girls up first, then the best girls on the team, then the lesser girls. At the time, DD didn't score all that well, and she would do better when she followed the best girl. Not sure if that was coincidence, psychological on the judge's part, or psychological on DD's part.

 

[flipflopcrystal]

coming from a coaches perspective: at meets when we get to pick the order the kids compete in, I personally tend to put a strong athlete first (to boost confidence and to set the bar with their teammates), especially on beam. if someone who may fall a lot or doesn't have great form goes first and gets an average score, the girls seem to become more nervious and over anxious. it's a domino effect. i think putting a strong person first does not give them an unfair position because they will get a score they earned.

as for meets when its a pre-scheduled rotation, it's go big or go home. you may *think* judges are scoring harder at the start, and that may or may not be true. but there's nothing more you can do than your personal best

 

[Esoteric]

We've even seen another gym in the state that has their girls who are waiting face away from the beam and not watch.

Our gym does this. Any girls that have yet to compete beam keep their backs to beam until after they compete. I am not sure if it works as intended or not, but all the girls comply.

 

[gymgal]

We've even seen another gym in the state that has their girls who are waiting face away from the beam and not watch.
.

Dd's team used to do this in the lower levels on all events. It was explained to them that they need to be going through their own routines in their head. Dd still does this but I don't think its required.



Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

 

[LittleMinaGymnast]

2 things:

I've heard that in the line-up, they place the stronger girls (within the team) last so that the weaker girls do not have to follow a "stronger" gymnast. ... sort of having to following a strong set of shoes...

in terms of judges holding back... it's not within the line-up, what I have heard (and only heard) is that as the meet goes on, they loosen up... and that they don't want to give too many high scores at first so that when a really strong gymnast comes up, the scores don't get ridiculously high... again, this is what I have heard, and I have heard it from many sources in many places, but I do not think it is a policy.... just human nature... if it is at all true.

I've heard this often enough. Our coaches say it all the time. But I often wondered the validity. More often than not, I see the best gymnasts in a team be the last to compete. And I have heard that judges typically hold back giving high scores at the beginning of the meet. Is there truth to this?

 

[Kiwi]

I think the problem may partly be to do with the judging system producing such high scores. In the New Zealand STEPS system (for WAG), the judging is based on FIG and is very tough. Not many girls score more than 14 out of 15, 12s and 13s are more usual. If you score anywhere in the 12s you did an okay routine, anywhere in the 13s is a good routine. From 14 up it must have been an excellent routine. The judging is done on deductions, but the judges also try to remember the very best routines so that they get the ranking right for the top few places (i.e. the medals), so occasionally a score might be adjusted by a very small amount for that reason. There isn't really a need to 'hold back' high scores with our system.

 

[gymgal]

Dunno, Did you purposely re-open a dead thread from a year ago? I had wondered how this topic got so many responses so quickly but I was on my phone and couldn't check dates.... great topic though.....

 

[Deleted member D3987]

actually, i didn't. someone else posted, i tracked back and saw it was an old post, it started again so i posted.

 

[iwannacoach]

I organized and hosted a clinic for judges, where the coaches were able to give consensus opinions about real time performances to allow the judges to better understand the skills and techniques on display. Having the kids in attendance to provide "skills and routines" for discussion really kept a lid on acrimony and defensive reponses, and a lot was accomplished. We had one particular judge in the group who had worked bars in a recent (well 28 years ago it was recent) meet and watched one of my kids do a routine including giants, a Jaeger, and a lay-out full dismount, only to confuse the Jaeger with a Brouse ? It gave me the opportunity to ensure, in the gentlest manner, that this judge could tell the difference from that point on. And to top it off....the juice and cookies were excellent!!!