WAG Why Top 3?

[bogwoppit]

No offense, but what right do you have to call me a name???? I don't go around calling you a jerk.

I think the emoticon was indicating humour. That is what they are for. He did not call you a CGM, nor did you call him a jerk. Did you?

I love numbers too, but lets not lose the humour in the statistics.

 

[Gymmomto2]

We always take top 3 scores at the meets except States & then we are divided as "large team" (over 10 I believe) & "small team (10 & under). The large team will take top 5 scores, small team will take top 3 scores. I think that is pretty fair.

 

[skschlag]

It might keep teams from some sandbagging, but I could see it turning into a "you bring our average down so we are going to keep you at X level this year."

There is probably no completely fair way to do it.

 

[gymgymgymnast08]

We could split up the states....I'll take west of the Mississippi River.

I'll get the east side! Do you think USA gymnastics would give us stipends?

 

[GymMom67]

Here, they have a "large team" award and a "small team" award. The small teams count 3 scores, the large teams count 5 scores.

 

[Natasha]

I don't think I would be in favor of counting all the scores for team score, especially at lower levels. I could see it leading to lots of problems both within teams and for just the concept of letting girls participate. Imagine the girls that have one weak event feeling bad about bringing down the team score in that event. And I could see some tension among the girls developing- I could see the stronger team girls being upset that girls that aren't as good are bringing down the team score. And then there are the CGM's that would try to get the lowest scoring girls off the team.... At the gym level I could see gyms getting pickier about who they let be on their team.
In any case, I really have a hard time understanding people getting worked up about team scores at the compulsory levels. Unless a gym has a strong optional program, I could care less if they are winning the compulsory levels. Around here by the time you get to optionals, most of the teams are very small (if they have enough for a team at all). The teams with more than 3 always have an advantage as they can drop their lowest score(s), except for the one meet we attend where you predesignate your team members.

 

[wnl256]

No offense, but what right do you have to call me a name???? I don't go around calling you a jerk.

Whoa there! He was joking around with you. That's why the smiley was there.

I'm with you: I'm sure I would do pretty much the same kind of tinkering with the numbers just because I'm curious. Some people just find our obsession with numbers to be unsettling. They can't help it.

 

[wnl256]

Although in her defense, cbifoja has had experiences with a real CGM. So I can understand why she might take offense at the label, even if it was meant in jest.

 

[teksquad]

Now you all have me thinking about averaging scores vs picking the top 3, and how that might affect the ranking of teams. So just for fun, I took the average all-around scores of each team in my daughter's session at her most recent meet. In my calculations, I didn't include the scores of gymnasts that didn't compete all 4 events. (fair in someways, but not fair in others?) and I kept the rule that you must have 3 people to make a team to count. The rankings turned out to be very different when using averaged AA scores vs top 3. I realize this could go any number of scenarios, depending on how well the individual gymnasts did that day. But, to just to compare results by team size:

Using top 3 scores, the 3 biggest teams got 1st thru 3rd place. The next biggest team got 4th place, and the smallest team got 5th place.

Using averaged AA scores, the top team still got 1st place, the above 4th place team got 2nd place, the above 5th place team got 3rd place, the above 3rd place team got 4th place, and the above 2nd place team got 5th place.

 

[&bs]

In Australia (well NSW anyway and National Clubs) there is 5 in a team and the top 3 scores count per apparatus (level 4-6) and 4 in a team 3 scores to count at 7-10 (level 9/10 is a combined team). You can make as many teams as you have enough gymnasts for. You have to fill the first team before you can make a second one etc, only the top 160 level 4's qualify for state, 120 5's and 80 6's so the most teams any club had was 3 level 4 teams, and no club had more than 1 team place in the top 6. In an interesting note 1st, 2nd and 3rd were the same at level 4 and 5. I think this probably evens the playing field in respect to club size.

 

[profmom]

No matter what system you put into place, people who care about such things will try to figure out ways to optimize the results.

The large team/small team system seems pretty good to me. It's difficult when a small team is up against a large team where if a couple of the top scorers falter, someone else can throw a good score into the breach. If you want a system where team scores are somewhat representative of the team, then having a system where the number of counted scores is pretty close to the number of gymnasts seems good (so large team/small team).

And the three isn't set in stone either -- at DD's state meet, they will take five scores, and for upper level boys, it's sometimes just two so that there can be more teams.

An experiment would be fun -- for one season, designate half the meets as average scores instead of top three or whatever and then run the numbers. Then do the same thing the next year with some kind of Bayesean model to take into account coaches' adjustments. My hypothesis is that after 2-3 years of updating, you'd see the same teams on top.

 

[wnl256]

And the three isn't set in stone either -- at DD's state meet, they will take five scores, and for upper level boys, it's sometimes just two so that there can be more teams.

At our state competitions for new levels 4 and 5, teams are ranked by the top 4 scores. The top 8 teams compete in a finals session, college style. Each team can put up any 6 gymnasts on each event. Top 4 scores count. It's very exciting and fun for the girls. Although I don't know how they can concentrate with the noise from the crowd (much higher than during the individual sessions).

 

[wnl256]

Using top 3 scores, the 3 biggest teams got 1st thru 3rd place. The next biggest team got 4th place, and the smallest team got 5th place.

Did you compare by age? That is, number of girls in each age group. IME (and from what our HC has told me in the past) scoring by top 3 or 4 favors the teams with older girls as they tend to get higher scores (at the compulsory levels anyway). Our team rarely did well in team competitions because we tend to have younger girls.

 

[cbifoja]

I didn't weight ages of competitors. I made each girl count equally.

 

[2G1B]

around here it is generally the youngest or next to youngest age group that scores the highest for levels 3 - 5. Oldest girls score higher for level 2 (and I'd guess maybe 1). For boys, a few of the older guys score well; but it also tends to be the higher scores are from the young guys. For boys level 5 at state this year the overall highest scorer of the meet was I'm pretty sure the youngest boy in the competition. If he wasn't *the* youngest, he was very close to it.

 

[2G1B]

Oh, and for the average score... I really just see that having teams really sticking to requiring move up scores that are 36 or higher and possibly not even letting girls who might score like a 33 compete. I don't see it working well at all to keep as many girls as possible in the sport. At a minimum I'd say they need to allow for "throwing out" the lowest some % of scores. (I say this because if it was say, throw out the lowest score, then that is great for a 4 girl team; but for a team with 15 girls on it, they are very likely to have several girls who have scored relatively low on each event; but they have to keep those scores in their average. So then the advantage would swing to the small teams who don't let the average gymnasts even compete.)

 

[profmom]

around here it is generally the youngest or next to youngest age group that scores the highest for levels 3 - 5. Oldest girls score higher for level 2 (and I'd guess maybe 1). For boys, a few of the older guys score well; but it also tends to be the higher scores are from the young guys. For boys level 5 at state this year the overall highest scorer of the meet was I'm pretty sure the youngest boy in the competition. If he wasn't *the* youngest, he was very close to it.

Huh. In our state, the toughest L5 age group for the guys was the 9 year olds. The guy who came in second there would have won any other age group handily.

 

[2G1B]

My son is a 9 yo and at quite a few meets he would have placed higher had he been in the 10 year old or 11+ age group; but by far the 7 and 8 year olds often took the highest scores. Especially this one kid. But he is absolutely amazing. And on our team it was our youngest guy (just turned 8 a month ago) who was generally our highest scorer.

 

[3rd_time_around]

This is what I was thinking. If the team scores were averages, teams would have less incentive to hold back girls to win, which happens ALL THE TIME here. So much so that I almost wonder if the team awards even mean anything.

It seems like it would encourage gyms to develop strong rosters all the way through, instead of using a few key kids to win the team awards. The girls who typically get scores counted for team here are usually scoring FAR above average, and could easily be doing a level or two up and winning. Is it coaches legitimately uptraing the kids so they can fast track to optionals, or is it coaches holding back kids to win? No one knows, but doing it this way would certainly reduce the incentive coaches have to sandbag.

It's so sad that teams feel they can't win unless they hold back. They must not have much confidence in their coaches or their gymnasts. I love the managing style of our gym's owners. Their philosophy is to get the gymnasts out of compulsories as quickly as possible (of course as quickly as their skill allows them to, not rushing gymnasts through) and get into optionals. We have not had a girl repeat compulsories for many years, and our Level 1-4 teams are undefeated this year (no repeaters, no one held back for high scores), last year won most of their meets, and our level 4 (old 5) is on a winning streak of 3 years (19 meets, including 2 state meets) with not one of the 3 teams having anyone from the previous year. We even have girls that skipped from old 2 to new 4, old 2 to new 3, and old 3 to new 4, and they are still winning this year.

Back to OP, I think if they upped the # from top 3, they may lose a lot of gyms in the team competition, because of size of teams. But, I remember when Sonshine Gymnastics would bring 3 girls and kick everyone's butts, even teams with 15 or more (they are still that good), so I think it is quality not quantity. And some girls make the teams with minimum skills for that level, so they can compete it and not be bored at a lower level, but aren't the top gymnasts. Some compulsories plod along with low or average scores until they get to optionals, then that is a better fit for them and they suddenly excel. It might be more exciting to have a large team and a small team division, but where would you draw the line for what is large and what is small?

 

[teksquad]

Did you compare by age? That is, number of girls in each age group. IME (and from what our HC has told me in the past) scoring by top 3 or 4 favors the teams with older girls as they tend to get higher scores (at the compulsory levels anyway). Our team rarely did well in team competitions because we tend to have younger girls.

Hi, wn1256-
I included gymnasts from all the age groups in my averages.