nates's routine

[Jeremy]

This, coupled with the big drop counts, to me means that Nate should definitely have made the cut.

Just out of curiosity - and I'm not just asking Ken, but everybody who saw the event and thinks Nate's routine should have got through, whose routine shouldn't have?

I believe the group was:

Ales, Scott D, Johnny M, Dexter, Jere V, Juho Marjo, Andrew Coleman and Nate - That's 8 people and four didn't get through?

I rated Johnnys routine very highly and I'm sure Ales put in a typical good routine. Going by the score, Nate was beaten by everyone except Andrew Coleman I think? Jere V is very good and I think he probably did a great routine. Scott D is obviously a previous world champ and it's easy to imagine that he had a good routine.

I think there are too different arguements. First we can argue that the judges didn't do a very good job and made a mistake. Or we can argue that the judges to the best job the system allowed and that we need to change the system so that a routine like Nate's get through in future years. I'm more in favour of the second option - I think in the past there has certainly been the attitude that the nature of the routine is more important than how many drops it has - two good examples is the mens finals 2002 and the womens finals last year. What this shows to me is that the judges are following particular beliefs and are consistant. Everybody who plans on competing next year take note of this - unless some change to the judging system is announced be prepared to take risks and you will most likely do better.

So I think that this result demonstrates an excellent job from the judges in staying consistant over a 3 year period! So I would argue that if you think that Nate should have got through, what needs to be changed is the definitions and the system used. In another topic I said a possible system would be to first judge players based completely on how many drops they make - thus if I get on stage and hold a toe stall for two minutes and everybody else drops I win. However one person just needs to do a single legover to beat me (unless you think a toe stall is particularly artistic ) - so we would see the diffilculty reduced a great deal from some players - obviously the top three players all went dropless so it still takes an incredible routine to win.

[FlexThis]

[pillar]

I believe the group was:

Ales, Scott D, Johnny M, Dexter, Jere V, Juho Marjo, Andrew Coleman and Nate - That's 8 people and four didn't get through?

You are missing Jere L. so 9 people - other than that you have it right. Here is the order that they advanced: 1. Ales, 2. Jere L., 3. Johnny M., 4. Jere V., 5. Juho Marjo and 6th was Scott D.

I think there are too different arguments. First we can argue that the judges didn't do a very good job and made a mistake. Or we can argue that the judges to the best job the system allowed and that we need to change the system so that a routine like Nate's get through in future years.

I would like to add two more arguments:

Third, seeding caused a lot of the problems. Let's just say it was messed up. This pool originally had Jorden Moir in it as well! Not to mention that we had pools of 6 where one was clearly lower in skills than the rest of them and 5 advanced.. Another topic of this seeding would be how Jere L., Jere V. and Juho Marjo could be in the same pool in qualification round and Semi-finals?

Fourth, the balance of drops and technical difficulty isn't clearly defined - probably other parts of judging might need some clarifications of what we are actually looking for in a routine. Not having any judges meeting isn't helping this situation.

So I would argue that if you think that Nate should have got through, what needs to be changed is the definitions and the system used.

I agree with you that in this case changing or redefining better the definitions of a routine would be the thing to do, but not with changing the system. This way of judging is still new in use and not a whole lot of people have real experience judging this way, especially when in Worlds the judges were changing all the time.

What I would like to see happening is to have some of the really experienced judges meeting with the current judges after they are done judging and going over the scores - explaining what was good judging from them and what probably should have been judged differently. That way the judges would really improve. But even this fall shorts, because we do not have enough 'full time' judges that judge consistently. That's our real problem in judging and I can't see it going away anytime soon.

In another topic I said a possible system would be to first judge players based completely on how many drops they make

I think this would be overdoing the balance of technicality and drops. Drops should matter, but not in this magnitude. I'm sure that system would have a whole new bunch of faults of it's own. Like I said before, I think clearing up what consists a good routine and what takes away from it and how much, will be good enough improvement with the fact that comes from keeping the same system and having more judges that have some experience of the current system under their belt.

Just some of my random thoughts..