All-Star Difficulty Scores: Subjective Or Objective?

[JulieP]

Execution is subjective. Can you create a scoring system you like without factoring in execution?

I think execution is always going to be subjective, and there's not really any way around that. My concern lies in the difficulty score for skills- which seems to be more cut and dry. In level 2, the straight ride basket is either in your routine or it's not, right? It is 100% possible to assign point values based on the skills that are in routines for each level and then score execution separately.

 

[cupieqt]

I think execution is always going to be subjective, and there's not really any way around that. My concern lies in the difficulty score for skills- which seems to be more cut and dry. In level 2, the straight ride basket is either in your routine or it's not, right? It is 100% possible to assign point values based on the skills that are in routines for each level and then score execution separately.

WSA does this. You can get all the points you want in difficulty by the skills you do and the amount of people involved. If you fall your execution score is low and you get deductions. Hit your routine and you'll do well. Hit a difficult routine and it's winner winner chicken dinner.
Jamfest is similar too. Who isn't doing this? We only attend those two brands of events so those are the scoresheets I know best.

 

[JulieP]

WSA does this. You can get all the points you want in difficulty by the skills you do and the amount of people involved. If you fall your execution score is low and you get deductions. Hit your routine and you'll do well. Hit a difficult routine and it's winner winner chicken dinner.
Jamfest is similar too. Who isn't doing this? We only attend those two brands of events so those are the scoresheets I know best.

Varsity brands does not do this, nor do they offer very much in the way of explanation for their scoring. I am sorry, but a one page scoring grid that covers all levels is just not going to cut it. These competitions are so expensive for teams to attend to begin with- EPs need to hold up their end of the bargain. That's before I go into them not having water in warm-up for teams this weekend and subpar medical attention for a bleeding athlete (including several minutes to "find" ice and the appropriate medical supplies. Back to where I was, sorry for sounding anti-Varsity (as a generally do). I think they have the right intentions in their scoring, but I think their grids are too vague to be well-understood by coaches and choreographers. Further, I really think the "half+1" for majority scoring is a little ridiculous- teams that are executing skills with their full team aren't being rewarded. I had a senior L3 team that didn't even come close to maxing out stunt difficulty with 4 body positions in their lib series (bow, scorp, scale, and arabesque) in addition to single based extended stretches (9 kids and 3 stunt groups = pretty ridiculous), multiple stunt transitions with ballups, 360s, and a few inversions. Off my soapbox.

 

[cupieqt]

Varsity brands does not do this, nor do they offer very much in the way of explanation for their scoring. I am sorry, but a one page scoring grid that covers all levels is just not going to cut it. These competitions are so expensive for teams to attend to begin with- EPs need to hold up their end of the bargain. That's before I go into them not having water in warm-up for teams this weekend and subpar medical attention for a bleeding athlete (including several minutes to "find" ice and the appropriate medical supplies. Back to where I was, sorry for sounding anti-Varsity (as a generally do). I think they have the right intentions in their scoring, but I think their grids are too vague to be well-understood by coaches and choreographers. Further, I really think the "half+1" for majority scoring is a little ridiculous- teams that are executing skills with their full team aren't being rewarded. I had a senior L3 team that didn't even come close to maxing out stunt difficulty with 4 body positions in their lib series (bow, scorp, scale, and arabesque) in addition to single based extended stretches (9 kids and 3 stunt groups = pretty ridiculous), multiple stunt transitions with ballups, 360s, and a few inversions. Off my soapbox.

This is why I do not attend Varsity events.

 

[ASCheerMan]

This is why I do not attend Varsity events.

Varsity's Scoring System can be found online at: http://varsityallstar.com/scoring/scoring.

We also offer these supplemental tools to aide in understanding the Varsity All Star Scoring System.
Training Video: http://varsityallstar.com/scoring/judgestrainingvideo. We've opened our Judges Training to the public so coaches are privy to the exact same information that we share with our judges.

Q&A with Coaches and Gym Owners took place on Facebook last season. We've posted the dialogue from that Q&A just below the Judges Training Video on the same page. The Q&A answers some of the more popular questions and goes into a little bit of detail as to the philosophy of the scoring system.

I can appreciate the comment that Varsity's scoring grid is vague. That is intentional, as we are trying to avoid compulsory routines with absurd requirements that may or may not help you demonstrate your team's best abilities. We want the rubric to be a floor plan for all the squads, but leave it open for teams to put their best foot forward.

And from a judges perspective, we want them to ENJOY your routine and not spend the entire 2 minutes and 30 seconds counting and checking off a list.

 

[Deleted member 15]

I think execution is always going to be subjective, and there's not really any way around that. My concern lies in the difficulty score for skills- which seems to be more cut and dry. In level 2, the straight ride basket is either in your routine or it's not, right? It is 100% possible to assign point values based on the skills that are in routines for each level and then score execution separately.

It's possible to assign a point value to every skill, but it's not practical. Even with L2 Baskets, in which you can only do a straight ride, you can have variations in whether or not a front person was used, the type of load in (with or without a pause after jumping in), arm variations, and whether or not everyone on the floor was used which impact the difficulty and give you at least 16 different ways of doing straight ride baskets.

 

[RockstarCheer]

Varsity's Scoring System can be found online at: http://varsityallstar.com/scoring/scoring.

We also offer these supplemental tools to aide in understanding the Varsity All Star Scoring System.
Training Video: http://varsityallstar.com/scoring/judgestrainingvideo. We've opened our Judges Training to the public so coaches are privy to the exact same information that we share with our judges.

Q&A with Coaches and Gym Owners took place on Facebook last season. We've posted the dialogue from that Q&A just below the Judges Training Video on the same page. The Q&A answers some of the more popular questions and goes into a little bit of detail as to the philosophy of the scoring system.

I can appreciate the comment that Varsity's scoring grid is vague. That is intentional, as we are trying to avoid compulsory routines with absurd requirements that may or may not help you demonstrate your team's best abilities. We want the rubric to be a floor plan for all the squads, but leave it open for teams to put their best foot forward.

And from a judges perspective, we want them to ENJOY your routine and not spend the entire 2 minutes and 30 seconds counting and checking off a list.

AMEN! This isn't Gymnastics this is All-Star Cheer!

 

[KB_Legend]

to me difficulty scores in stunts (which I think is what we are mainly talking about here) are somewhat objective at least to the degree that X skill gets you into Y RANGE. The reason X skill can't give you Y exact value is partly due to the huge number of possible combinations (What's more difficult a 1.25 up with a high to high tick tock, or a 1.5 up with a low to high tick tock?) and the fact that there are still new skills that have never been competed so how would they get scored the first time they were ever done? What about a team that does 3 1.5 ups and 2 full ups vs. a team that does 5 1.25 ups? Just throwing out some examples but my main point is that there are too many possible combinations of skills that are not necessarily comparable to one another. In gymnastics (at the very basic level) you are either flipping, twisting, or some combination of both and you are either doing it forward or backward, so each flip gets you x amount of difficulty frontwards and y amount of difficulty backward, and then the same for twists. Stunts have Twisting mounts, twisting transitions, twisting dismounts, release moves that change legs, release moves that don't change legs, twisting dismounts, flipping dismounts, 6 standard body positions, release moves from the ground, release moves from the top, coed stunts, all girl stunts with no backspots, traditional all girl stunts, all girl stunts with a front spot, etc etc etc... So my belief is that the way it is currently set up, it's not possible for anyone to sit down and figure out every single possible combination of entries, transitions, dismounts, and body positions, and assign it a point value that all falls between 9 and 10, especially without going out to 4 or 5 decimal places... The way it is now, the rubric objectively places you into a range of scores, which you should be able to figure out from the companies rubric, then it's up to the judge to assign your point value within that range. The trick is to find judges who are extremely familiar with the companies rubric and expertly trained in it's execution, AND (I think this one gets overlooked a lot) find judges that still have their iron in the cheerleading fire, so to speak. It is imperative that companies hire people who are currently involved in the sport and have a true knowledge of how these building and tumbling skills are being executed, how difficult they really are for kids to perform etc etc... Unfortunately winning a bunch of high school national championships 15-20 years ago or teaching summer camps for the company you're judging for, don't necessarily make you qualified... That's just my opinion, and this post is long enough that I doubt most people will read it anyway

 

[cupieqt]

Varsity's Scoring System can be found online at: http://varsityallstar.com/scoring/scoring.

We also offer these supplemental tools to aide in understanding the Varsity All Star Scoring System.
Training Video: http://varsityallstar.com/scoring/judgestrainingvideo. We've opened our Judges Training to the public so coaches are privy to the exact same information that we share with our judges.

Q&A with Coaches and Gym Owners took place on Facebook last season. We've posted the dialogue from that Q&A just below the Judges Training Video on the same page. The Q&A answers some of the more popular questions and goes into a little bit of detail as to the philosophy of the scoring system.

I can appreciate the comment that Varsity's scoring grid is vague. That is intentional, as we are trying to avoid compulsory routines with absurd requirements that may or may not help you demonstrate your team's best abilities. We want the rubric to be a floor plan for all the squads, but leave it open for teams to put their best foot forward.

And from a judges perspective, we want them to ENJOY your routine and not spend the entire 2 minutes and 30 seconds counting and checking off a list.

I understand that and can appreciate it bc I don't wish to see compulsory routines either. I just dislike the opportunity for teams that don't have the all of the necessary level skills to beat teams that have worked hard to get them. I appreciate clean and creative routines but I also know how hard it is to accomplish the difficulty. I wouldn't be happy if my team that had squad standing tucks lost to a team that had a really neat basket sequence while only 8 of their members did their standing tucks.
The grids I follow for WSA and Jamfest are still guidelines too though. They give you examples to follow and give you the range of where your score will fall. It's up to you to give it the creativity and pizazz to actually score well. I think teams that can hit on these scoresheets should also do well on a varsity scoresheet but that isn't the case around here. When we lose to teams on these scoresheets, we can point out exactly WHY to our athletes and they can turn around and work on those specific elements. It takes the guess work out and we can improve more quickly. When we lose to teams on a varsity scoresheet, all we can do is shrug and say "they liked this team better". I've never gotten a single piece of useful advice from a judge if a varsity event I've attended.

One of my coaches judged for a WSA competition recently. She gave coaches specific advice on how to improve their scores. She even met with a few after the comp to answer their questions. I was so proud of her. The last varsity event I brought my kids to, I begged the EP to speak with the judges when it was over and was told no. They would not answer any of my questions. To this day I'll never know why my team that hit solid and clean lost to a team that dropped every stunt, with a routine that included numerous illegal elements and even had a horrible tumbling collision (large teenage male landed a tuck ON TOP of a lost 5 year old nugget). Yes. That happened and they won a tumbling award too -_-

 

[JulieP]

to me difficulty scores in stunts (which I think is what we are mainly talking about here) are somewhat objective at least to the degree that X skill gets you into Y RANGE. The reason X skill can't give you Y exact value is partly due to the huge number of possible combinations (What's more difficult a 1.25 up with a high to high tick tock, or a 1.5 up with a low to high tick tock?) and the fact that there are still new skills that have never been competed so how would they get scored the first time they were ever done? What about a team that does 3 1.5 ups and 2 full ups vs. a team that does 5 1.25 ups? Just throwing out some examples but my main point is that there are too many possible combinations of skills that are not necessarily comparable to one another. In gymnastics (at the very basic level) you are either flipping, twisting, or some combination of both and you are either doing it forward or backward, so each flip gets you x amount of difficulty frontwards and y amount of difficulty backward, and then the same for twists. Stunts have Twisting mounts, twisting transitions, twisting dismounts, release moves that change legs, release moves that don't change legs, twisting dismounts, flipping dismounts, 6 standard body positions, release moves from the ground, release moves from the top, coed stunts, all girl stunts with no backspots, traditional all girl stunts, all girl stunts with a front spot, etc etc etc... So my belief is that the way it is currently set up, it's not possible for anyone to sit down and figure out every single possible combination of entries, transitions, dismounts, and body positions, and assign it a point value that all falls between 9 and 10, especially without going out to 4 or 5 decimal places... The way it is now, the rubric objectively places you into a range of scores, which you should be able to figure out from the companies rubric, then it's up to the judge to assign your point value within that range. The trick is to find judges who are extremely familiar with the companies rubric and expertly trained in it's execution, AND (I think this one gets overlooked a lot) find judges that still have their iron in the cheerleading fire, so to speak. It is imperative that companies hire people who are currently involved in the sport and have a true knowledge of how these building and tumbling skills are being executed, how difficult they really are for kids to perform etc etc... Unfortunately winning a bunch of high school national championships 15-20 years ago or teaching summer camps for the company you're judging for, don't necessarily make you qualified... That's just my opinion, and this post is long enough that I doubt most people will read it anyway

I agree about not being able to designate a point value for each individual skill. It would be impossible to do- especially through a whole routine. My point is more that it should be set out- you need to do X, Y, and Z in your stunt section in order to be in the upper range. Or in the case of level 2 tumbling, maybe a standing BHS gets you in the lower range and a BWO-BHS (w/stepout)to a RO BHS gets you into the upper range. I feel like there needs to be some clarificatio

 

[JulieP]

I agree about not being able to designate a point value for each individual skill. It would be impossible to do- especially through a whole routine. My point is more that it should be set out- you need to do X, Y, and Z in your stunt section in order to be in the upper range. Or in the case of level 2 tumbling, maybe a standing BHS gets you in the lower range and a BWO-BHS (w/stepout)to a RO BHS gets you into the upper range. I feel like there needs to be some clarificatio

Hit enter too early. Grrr. I just think there needs to be some clarification as to what scores in the high and low ranges for difficulty.

 

[cupieqt]

Hit enter too early. Grrr. I just think there needs to be some clarification as to what scores in the high and low ranges for difficulty.

Right! It's not a specific score for a specific skill that we are looking for. It's the guidelines that tell you the scoring range for the basic level skills, the intermediate level skills and the advanced level skills. I know a team can max out a million different ways, just give me a few examples of what it takes and I'll do the rest. If we can score higher by connecting three different jumps, I'll be sure to include that in my choreography of jumps. So can you Julie. Now which one of us can do it in the most creative way with athletes that can execute it the best? We are both capable of reading the grid so may the best team (and coaches) win.

 

[JulieP]

AMEN! This isn't Gymnastics this is All-Star Cheer!

At the same time, there’s a lot to be learned from the gymnastics world when it comes to trying to increase the amount of objectivity there is in scoring. I used to coach gymnastics and competitive dance also, so I like to think that I know both sides of this story pretty well. Gymnastics has really moved toward making as much of their scoring as objective as possible- which includes standard routines for all the lower levels (same music and same choreography for each athlete’s routines). Believe me, I don’t want to go that far- I like that our sport honors creativity, and I would never, ever want to go to a competition and watch the same routines a billion times. On the other hand, from coaching dance it’s almost that creativity, expression, and showmanship are paramount in judging and then skills are sort of the second part. I think cheer falls somewhere in the middle- depending on the event (and EP, obviously) you might be rewarded more for certain things based on you routine and its relation to the scoresheet. I just feel like we could learn a lot from gymnastics in the way that they have objectified scoring. There are certain things that can, and should, be scored objectively.

 

[KikiD22]

The way it is now, the rubric objectively places you into a range of scores, which you should be able to figure out from the companies rubric, then it's up to the judge to assign your point value within that range.

I agree with you that this is probably as good as it's going to get while maintaining some practicality and functionality in a scoring system. However, I am more curious to know what checks and balances are in place to make sure that a set of judges is assigning both similar and accurate difficulty scores within that range. What system is in place to stop a judge from giving a team with 5 back walkovers out of 12 the same difficulty score as a team with 10 back walkovers out of 12 (some EP's scoring systems DO have this)? Or giving the same score to a team that steps straight up into a heel stretch (sorry, using a level 1 example again) as they give to a team that does a switch-up into the heel stretch? I understand that it is logistically impossible to assign a value to each and every skill in this sport. However, I guess what I would like to see is more consistency in the way that scoring range in applied and truly rewarding a more difficult routine.

 

[JulieP]

Varsity's Scoring System can be found online at: http://varsityallstar.com/scoring/scoring.

We also offer these supplemental tools to aide in understanding the Varsity All Star Scoring System.
Training Video: http://varsityallstar.com/scoring/judgestrainingvideo. We've opened our Judges Training to the public so coaches are privy to the exact same information that we share with our judges.

Q&A with Coaches and Gym Owners took place on Facebook last season. We've posted the dialogue from that Q&A just below the Judges Training Video on the same page. The Q&A answers some of the more popular questions and goes into a little bit of detail as to the philosophy of the scoring system.

I can appreciate the comment that Varsity's scoring grid is vague. That is intentional, as we are trying to avoid compulsory routines with absurd requirements that may or may not help you demonstrate your team's best abilities. We want the rubric to be a floor plan for all the squads, but leave it open for teams to put their best foot forward.

And from a judges perspective, we want them to ENJOY your routine and not spend the entire 2 minutes and 30 seconds counting and checking off a list.

I appreciate the reply. I think we may have to agree to disagree about the benefits of a vague scoring grid. Just in general, it would seem to me that any clarification that you can give to coaches/choreographers is going to help them to be successful in writing the routine and coaching their teams. I think there’s still room for creativity and difficulty within a more concise grid. Further, we stress to our teams the importance of understanding the expectations of our gym, sport, team, etc. and kids are successful in situations where the expectations/rules are clear. Further, I believe that it’s the same for us as coaches. We have teams/gyms that want to be successful and are willing to seek out the information we need (as I do), and I truly want to know and understand what an EP expects in the teams/routines that place well at their competition. I think it’s VERY important that EPs give as much information as possible- coaches and gym owners will likely feel better about the routine they bring to your competition and will continue attending your events.
Additionally, I do want to point out that I have logged on to the Varsity Scoring Site listed above many times and was unaware of the judges page which offers some scoring clarifications. When you go to the page listed above, it has the scoring grid, scoresheets, and a link to the Varsity Virtual Critique (which is a billed service). Nowhere on that page does it mention that there is scoring clarification on the judging video. As a coach, maybe I should have sought out this resource, but I didn’t know it existed as it wasn’t linked to the actual scoring page. Maybe it would be good to add a little paragraph that states that additional scoring clarifications can be found on the Judges Training Video at www.varsityallstar.com/etc...