Handling of legality issues at competitions

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Andre said:
njgymrat said:
When I was certfied to judge gymnastics I had to pay for the materials myself. The State Branch of the National Judging Organization set up study sessions in locations where several of us could attend at reasonable cost. Once ready to take the test again we went through the State and they submited everything up the chain.

Safety certification was done in a similar manner.

Do you think the USASF is currently capable of following this model?

I think that it would be the most cost effective way of doing it. It was broken down by State/Region and Nation. Even if we could not agree on the exact regions per se, each State could move forward if they had the auth from National. There are already reps in place around the country for Coaches certification and there are scheduled regional meetings as it is. Several groups already have their meetings as well.

It would take a little more planning and perhaps one extra day to account for additional people that want to participate. A reasonable timeline to me seems to be 2-3 year window. The danger is in waiting to have it done perfectly the first time out it never gets done. As long as the goals are clearly articulated and the wider USASF community is informed - then I believe it can get done.
 
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Exactly, as long as the system gets implemented with the idea that it can improve with time I think it can be successful. Anytime you delay the launch of a program waiting for perfection it may never launch.
 
If there was a regional/state network of people that could train safety experts this would be a great plan, but do we have that network now? If not, what do we need to do to get it?

I know the USASF has regional managers, but do they still have state managers? All of the current regional managers I know of have non-USASF full time jobs. Are they in a position to add safety judge training to their plate? Are they experts themselves and even capable of making someone else an expert? If the network doesn't exist or the people in the network are not capable of training the people we need trained, this plan won't work right now.

USASF already has regions, so that is taken care of.
Being a coach credentialer (sp?) doesn't mean you are a rules expert.

njgymrat - Is a weekend enough time to train someone to the level people want? Right now the training and test takes a day and we have enough complaints to have this conversation. Is 1 additional day enough time to get where we want/need to be?
 
Andre said:
? Are they experts themselves and even capable of making someone else an expert? If the network doesn't exist or the people in the network are not capable of training the people we need trained, this plan won't work right now.

I would hope that being one of the top people in your field would make you capable of training additional people in your specific area of expertise.. otherwise you wouldn't be much of an expert now, would you? If these experts can't train the next round to come through the ranks, we're pretty screwed - at least for the time being. I think you're only as good as the knowledge you know and can show to other people, and I've found the best way to learn more is to be able to teach it to someone else successfully. Just mouthing it off doesn't mean much to me.. but if someone can show it to me clearly, I'd be all ears. I think they can do it.. it's just a matter of when and how. :thumbs up:
 
ohkcheery said:
Andre said:
? Are they experts themselves and even capable of making someone else an expert? If the network doesn't exist or the people in the network are not capable of training the people we need trained, this plan won't work right now.

I would hope that being one of the top people in your field would make you capable of training additional people in your specific area of expertise.. otherwise you wouldn't be much of an expert now, would you? If these experts can't train the next round to come through the ranks, we're pretty screwed - at least for the time being. I think you're only as good as the knowledge you know and can show to other people, and I've found the best way to learn more is to be able to teach it to someone else successfully. Just mouthing it off doesn't mean much to me.. but if someone can show it to me clearly, I'd be all ears. I think they can do it.. it's just a matter of when and how. :thumbs up:

My impression of the regional managers is they are there to organize the regions, possibly making them organizational experts, but not necessarily making them experts in tumbling, tosses, stunts, choreography or rules. Amy Clark was my regional manager and she did a great job of getting information to us, running the regional conference, credentialing coaches, and training people so they can credential coaches, but I don't think of her as a rules expert. I very well could be mistaken about Amy and the other regional managers, and I'm sure someone will let me know if I am. When I think of rules experts there is a limited number of people that come to mind, 5 to be exact.

Maybe the first thing we need to do is figure out how many people have the knowledge we want them to have and where they are geographically.
 
Andre said:
Another thing that needs to be addressed is who is paying for everything. Right now if I wanted to be a safety judge I would have to pay to attend the meeting and take the test. (I don't remember if these costs are separate or not since I did not get certified last season and I don't know if allowing people to attend the meeting without getting certified changed anything). The closest 2 meetings to me are 200 and 375 miles away, so I would likely need to get a hotel room for at least one night. How many people that have the potential to be experts are willing to pay to become one. Is there a structure that can be set up so they don't have to pay that is reasonable to those that pay for them?

How long would the training session need to be in order for it to be sufficient? If it could be done in a weekend there could probably be several session around the country, reducing travel costs. If the training is a work week, I would guess there would only be few options, likely increasing the cost of getting the expert candidates there.

I know for a fact that American championships deduction judges go through three long days of training going over each and evey rule! Along with watching videos and acting as if it was a real competiton, I think that's one of the best parts about American championships! Plus on each judging pannel there are three deduction judges who just look for legalities and mistakes as well as a supervisor who overseas every single leagity to make sure it's correct! So if you attend an american championship competition before any of your "big dances" you'll be sure to know about your legalities :)
 
I haven't read the last couple long posts so I apologize if this has been mentioned but why couldn't the USASF take applications from various people within the industry and pick a person or two from each region and pay them to become the rules "expert" for their region and develop some type of week long (or whatever) training course for all of them, then send them out to do the training in their specific regions???
 
I like the way it was wayyyy back in the day (or at least the way I remember it). If you competed a skill at UCA regional and it was considered "legal" as long as it was performed the same way and you could PROVE it, then it had to be considered LEGAL for the rest of the UCA events. Now granted this was many many years ago and rules have changed drastically but I think it would definately step up the way that event producers staff their judging panel throughout the season. Now if a skill is CLEARLY illegal I think their should be a method in place to get that taken care of if a team "gets away with one'. But isn't that the reason teams go to regionals? To test out the routine, see how it scores, have a PROFESSIONAL JUDGE view and comment on the routine so that adjustments/corrections can be made before the team gets to the "big" comps.

On a completely different soapbox. If USASF allows a competition company to award a bid to their event, why can't they require those companies to all use the same scoresheet? I just don't get it. If they don't want to use the scoresheet then ok, that company can't award bids, simple as that. If the judges don't want to take the proper training OR if they are consistanly doing a "poor job" then they DON'T HAVE TO JUDGE.

Ok that's it for now.
 
While I am currently against standardized scoresheets for every competition I am in favor of them for Worlds Bid divisions. Since Worlds is the only competition run by USASF to me this is doable next season.
 
FLcoach said:
Legality judges need to have to be certified in legalities by the USASF.... a special certification to be able to be a legalities judge. And they need to be tested on the rules, know the rules front and back, and be able to spot deductions at ALL levels

USASF offers the certification but to my knowledge still only requires USASF certified safety judges at bid events. This means that event producers aren't required to have certified safety folks at all of their other (non-bid-giving) events. It opens up the door for a whole lot of issues when Joe Schmoe calls legalities for ABC Company at all of their one-day events and perhaps misses things that someone who is certified might catch and then those teams go the a larger event with a certified safety judge and find out their skills are illegal. I know there are a lot of companies that refuse to use a legality person who isn't certified but for every one of those there seems to be another company using someone who isn't certified.
 
njgymrat said:
While I am currently against standardized scoresheets for every competition I am in favor of them for Worlds Bid divisions. Since Worlds is the only competition run by USASF to me this is doable next season.


Does this mean the same scoresheet would be used at every competition that has a worlds bid qualifying divison? I'm a little slow.....
 
CharlotteASMom said:
njgymrat said:
While I am currently against standardized scoresheets for every competition I am in favor of them for Worlds Bid divisions. Since Worlds is the only competition run by USASF to me this is doable next season.


Does this mean the same scoresheet would be used at every competition that has a worlds bid qualifying divison? I'm a little slow.....

I think he's saying it would be used in the Worlds divisions at Worlds qualifiers, not every division at Worlds qualifiers.

I think everyone already knows I'm against a Universal Score Sheet, but I'll say it again.
 
How was it that one of you phrased it on a thread about this before?

Something about the competitions being judged the same way but the percentages/weighting differing by company? One of you said it very well and I liked the idea of it.
 
CharlotteASMom said:
How was it that one of you phrased it on a thread about this before?

Something about the competitions being judged the same way but the percentages/weighting differing by company? One of you said it very well and I liked the idea of it.

I know I wasn't the one that phrased it, but I would like to have everything scored the same way (100 point base or whatever), but allow the event producers to apply different percentages on skills. So, maybe UCA says stunts are 25%, pyramids are 25%, tumbling is 25%, everything else is 25%, etc. But Cheersport wants stunts at 20%, pyramids at 20%, tumbling at 30% and everything else is 30%. Etc, etc.

That would allow the event producers to emphasize the skills they want, but the scoring system from event to event is the same.
 
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