First Steps 9 - Judging & Scoring

What Judges Do

In many sports sucess can be directly measured, e.g. number of goals scored, time to run 100 metres etc., but in trampolining sucess is judged.

There are two aspects to judging a trampoline performance; firstly the execution (form) of a move, secondly the difficulty of a move or its tariff. Judges are basically divided into these two camps.

Types of Judges

A competition judging panel consists of form judges and tariff judges. There are also other jobs such as Chair of Judges, recorders, assistants etc. but we will concentrat on the two main jobs.

Form Judges score the routine in the range 0.0 to1.0 points per move. There are 10 moves so a perfect score would be 10. Each compeitor starts with 10 points and then deductions of 0.1 to 1.0 are applied for moves that are less than perfect. More details of deductions can be found elsewhere on this site (see Code of Points) but here are a few examples:

Lack of form, consistency of height and control - 0.1 to 0.5
Wobbling at the end of routine - 0.1 to 0.2
Touching the bed with hand - 0.4
Falling on the bed - 0.6

At the end of the routine the scores for all five form judges are collected, the highest and lowest scores are discarded and the average of the three remaining scores is the form for that routine.

Tariff Judges confirm that the elements of a set routine are performed as required. For a voluntary routine they will work out the difficulty of each move based on the number of quarter somersaults, half twist and the shape of the move. The difficulty of a move may range from 0.0 for a tuck jump to 2.0 and above for complex moves. At the end of the routine the judge presents the tariff score for the routine, which for a voluntary routine is added to the form score to give a total score for the routine.

It is quite a skill to correctly tariff 10 moves in quick succession when the each contain multiple twist and somersaults. Judges often use a shorthand method of recording the scores just so they can keep up with the routine.

Level of Judges

Progression through the judging ranks. You must be 15 to become a Club Judge.

British Gymnastics offer a range of Judging Qualifications and Judge Training Courses as follows:

• British Gymnastics Club Judge Award
• British Gymnastics County Judge Award
• British Gymnastics Regional Judge Award
• British Gymnastics Zonal Judge Award
• British Gymnastics National Judge Award
• British Gymnastics Brevet Judge Award

Learn about coaching in our next section...