Competition organisation

Brentwood Trampoline Club
CASC Registration 04613

Competition organisation & judging

Not intended to be a definitive guide, the following was produced to help some local schools arrange an inter-school competition using officials and organisers who had not previously been to a trampoline competition. As such it serves as a useful beginners guide.

Introduction

To run effectively, a trampoline competition requires a substantial organisation activity including officials, equipment, safety mats and a host of other things easily forgotten. This document identifies the roles and activities involved in a competition and provides some useful points of reference. At the end of the day, however, experience is everything and the more practiced you become in fulfilling the required activities then the smoother the competition organisation. This paper addresses specifically:

the planning of a competition
the organisation required to support one ‘panel’, a panel typically comprises two trampolines set out as illustrated in Figure 1 below, together with associated officials – a competition can comprise a number of panels, and
how routines are judged

It is worth noting that competitions normally run in up to 3 ‘rounds’ being:

Compulsory, or Set round, in which each performer competes an identical routine,
Voluntary round in which each performer can compete a routine of their own construction (although comprising only legitimate moves) and often with some constraints on the overall level of difficulty, and
A Final round in which the highest scoring performers (typically up to 8) will compete in a second Voluntary round

… although in local, friendly or other low-level competition it is rare for there to be a Final round.

Planning

When planning a competition there are a number of key points to consider:

Equipment and consumables,
- Do you have all the equipment necessary to run the competition and is it fit for purpose? If not where can you acquire the extra kit you need?
- How long will you need to set the equipment up?
- Do you have enough tables and chairs for officials and audience?
- Do you have benches or mats for performers to sit on whilst waiting to compete?
- Do you have suitable barriers or other demarcation between the competition zone and audience?
- Do you have sufficient score cards for the number of judges you will require?
- Do you have scrap paper and pens/pencils for the judges to use;
- Do you copies of the programme with competitors listed by name in competition order for the Competition Marshall & Chair of Judges to use?
- Do you have team & individual recording sheets pre-printed for each competition group with competitor names listed in competition order;
- Do you have calculators for the recorders to use if they are not skilled at mental arithmetic?
Facilities,
- Are the facilities suitable to allow for audience as well as participants?
- Is the ceiling high enough to allow for the level of trampolinist competing?
- Are there ample toilet and changing facilities close to the competition venue for both performers, officials and audience?
- Are refreshments available during the competition for officials?
People,
- Do you have enough officials?
- Do you have enough ‘suitably experienced’ helpers to set up the competition equipment and facilities and then take them down again afterwards?
- Who will be checking that all performers/teams are as previously advised – are there any substitutions/withdrawals etc…?
Timetable,
- Have you allowed enough time for each competitor to warm-up adequately and compete two (or three) rounds of competition?
  - As a rule of thumb – BG competitions normally allow from between 4½ to 6½ minutes per competitor for 2 rounds of competition and associated warm-ups with 4½ being enough for novices and 6½ being required for advanced performers – with inexperienced judges more time may be required;
  - In timetabling each group have you ‘randomised’ the order in which competitors will be asked to compete?
- Have you allowed for setting up and taking down again?
- Have you allowed some time in case things go wrong?
Safety Issues,
- All competitors and officials must be familiar with the basic safety rules:
  - Appropriate attire = soft, no buckles, toggles or hoods. Feet covered (socks). Long hair tied back. NO jewellery.
  - Appropriate behaviour = competitors should follow all instructions immediately, staying at side of trampoline watching colleagues whilst waiting go, one per trampoline only, no going under the trampoline, only attempting skills instructed.
  - Appropriate fitness = inform an official at once of any health issues that may affect your participation or if hurt whilst trampolining.
- All equipment and facilities must have adequate safety procedures in place.

Figure 1 - Layout and roles of a competition panel

Roles

There are several groups of officials to consider for each panel as follows – these are presented in the order that the performer might experience their activity:

Warm-Up Marshalls

During the warm-up period performers are normally allowed to try either of the two trampolines allocated to a panel although they will only have a limited number of ‘goes’. The Warm-up Marshalls’ role is principally to control competitors during the warm-ups ensuring that all have the correct number of goes – this is normally done by each performer providing a ‘warm-up card’ to the Warm-up Marshall on their preferred trampoline who will then call names in order and mark the card each time the performer has a go. Warm-up Marshalls are also responsible for ensuring that nobody bounces in an unsafe manner, inappropriately dressed or without adequate spotters.

Each warm-up go should only be long enough to complete a routine after some preliminary bounces plus possibly enough time to repeat a single skill that caused a problem (say approx. 30 seconds or less) – any additional time ought to be an exception and abuse of this can result in deductions being made to the performers score; the Warm-up Marshall is responsible for informing the Chair of Judges of any abuse. Where performers are likely to be repeating the set routine as a voluntary it is normal to give four warm-ups at the beginning and then to go through all Sets and Voluntaries without a break; if, however, they are likely to be different, then there will be two set warm-ups followed by all performers competing their set routines and then two voluntary warm-ups followed by competing the voluntaries – however, this is entirely at the discretion of the competition organiser.

Competition Marshall

Once the warm-ups are completed the Competition Marshall takes over and the timetable now rests largely on this person’s shoulders! As well as the preliminary warm-ups each competitor is entitled to one further warm-up before competing. This additional ‘controlled’ warm-up takes place a couple of minutes before the performer is due to compete; normally whilst the judges are adding up and presenting their scores for another performer. The Competition Marshall’s role, therefore, is to control the performers during the competition phase, ensuring they are ready to warm-up and/or compete at the right time, are correctly dressed and have the correct number of spotters with them.

They will normally do this by sitting the performers down in their competition order, at the same time verifying that they are indeed present, and briefing everybody on the importance of listening for their name and ensuring that they have spotters available when they go to either warm-up or compete. Once the first 5 have been called these will be asked to have their additional warm-up immediately (on the trampoline of their choice and with adequate spotters) – this is known as the 5-up warm-up – the Competition Marshall will then continue to assemble the remaining competitors whilst these warm-ups are taking place. After the 5-up warm-up the 1st competitor will then be asked to mount their trampoline and wait for the Chair of Judges to invite them to start their routine, the Competition Marshall will, in the meantime get the 6th competitor ready to have their controlled warm-up – number 6 then warms up as soon as number 1 finishes competing and the Competition Marshall then gets number 2 ready to compete and so on until all have competed. So the order can be seen to be 1-5 W/Up – 1 Comp – 6 W/Up – 2 Comp – 7 W/Up – 3 Comp – 8 W/Up etc… Obviously, the last 5 performers compete with no intervening warm-ups although there will still be a gap between as Judges prepare their marks.

Spotters

In the layout shown in Figure 1 above each trampoline should have 2 spotters positioned so as not to interfere with the judges view, and dressed in sports clothing with no jewellery (or other objects potentially able to harm somebody falling against them) during the competition phase. The Spotters’ role is to watch the performer at all times in case they need help to stay on the trampoline if in difficulty, and possibly to use the push-in mat if it is required. During the warm-up phase all competitors ought to be spotting when not warming-up. Spotters ought to be tall enough to see the trampoline clearly, have been instructed on rudimentary safety issues and be at least a similar size as those competing – they can be colleagues or team-mates of those performing. It is competitors’ responsibility to ensure they have adequate spotters although Warm-up/Competition Marshalls will not allow the performers to start bouncing if they do not have them.

Chair of Judges

This is the other vitally important role which, if performed poorly, can result in the competition falling into disarray! The Chair of Judges’ role is to ensure that each performer is correctly identified and complying with all safety requirements, that the judges are ready to mark them and that the marking is then carried out fairly and in accordance with a number of rules. In order to ensure the fairness of judging the Chair of Judges should organise some test judging during the latter phases of warm-ups and use those results to help the judges align their scores more readily. They may also explain some decisions to the performer where they might be unexpected or likely to cause upset. If any other judge is performing poorly the Chair of Judges can direct them to change how they are marking or ask them to leave the judging panel – any judge regularly more than 0.5 higher or lower than other judges might be questioned in this regard. Some specific examples of the rules that the Chair of Judges would be expected to monitor are:

That the performer does not take excessive time before starting their routine;
All landings are safe and, in the case of foot landings, not on one foot;
That, in the event of an invalid landing or unsafe move, all moves including that landing (e.g. contact with a side pad or end mat) are not counted and relevant deductions advised to judges;
The routine comprises 10 valid moves and, if not, to advise the judges of the error(s) and relevant deductions.
At the end of the competition group their final responsibility is to check and sign-off the Recorder Sheets and ensure they are passed to the competition organiser.

Form Judges

The 5 Form Judges’ role is to provide as objective a view as possible of how well each performer performs each move of their routine taking into account, in particular:

Inconsistent height;
Travel around the bed away from the cross;
Poor formation of shape being performed (i.e. straight, pike or tuck) in the move;
Poor phasing of the move

They will do this by allocating each of the 10 moves (also known as contacts) a score deduction of between 0 (perfect) to 0.5 (very poor indeed) – see Form Deductions below. Once they have marked all 10 contacts they will then add them up and deduct the total from 10.0 (if the Chair has advised that the routine was performed correctly with 10 moves) – this then becomes their score before any deductions are taken into account. Once any deductions are taken into account the Form Judges will then be asked to raise their scorecards for the Chair to read out for the benefit of the Recorders.

Tariff Judges

The (typically) two Tariff Judges’ role requires much more experience than a Form Judge since they need to recognise each move as it occurs as well as pass judgement on it! During the Compulsory or Set round they will check that each move is as prescribed and, if the performer varies from the set routine, to advise the Chair of Judges of the error – the Chair will then instruct the Form Judges as to what deductions to make. During the voluntary round, however, the Tariff Judges need to calculate the difficulty of each move as it occurs ascribing 0.1 for each quarter somersault and half twist plus additional bonuses for certain shapes and completed somersaults – repeated moves, however, have no difficulty allocated at all. During the voluntary round the tariff judges will also raise a score card for the Chair to read out after first confirming that both have the same score and, if not, analysing their marks for error. In more advanced levels of competition Tariff Judges also review Tariff Sheets provided by performers.

Recorders

The Recorders’ role is to mark down the scores as they are called out by the Chair of Judges, asking for clarification immediately if they are not clear, and then to calculate the individuals’ and any team scores. The individual score is calculated by taking the 5 scores and then adding up the three mid-scores (i.e. discounting the highest and lowest) – in the Set round this sum becomes the performers Set Form Score. In the Voluntary round the Tariff, or Difficulty, score is added to the calculated Form Score to create the aggregate Voluntary Score.

After each performer’s score has been calculated the aggregate score for that round is copied to the appropriate team recording sheet. In the even that any judge fails to provide a score the recorders will take an average of the given scores and use this average in its place – perversely this means that one of the given scores will be discarded whilst the average score will count.

Figure 2 - An example of a recording sheet

In some competitions there will be a computer recorder as well as a manual recorder - these are intended to be calculated separately and then compared after each sum has been completed to guard against errors.

Once all have competed the performers’ ranking is decided based on the aggregate of the Set Form Score and Voluntary Score – in the event of a tie there are detailed tie-break rules that are applied iteratively until a clear decision is arrived at.

Figure 3 - An example of a team recording sheet

Team scores (with teams comprising 3 or 4 members) are calculated separately but based on the individual scores as copied through from above.

After each round the three highest scoring team members’ scores are added together to create the score for that round – these may be three different members in each round – and then the aggregate for each round added together to give a team total which is used to determine the teams’ rankings.

Again, in the event of a tie there are detailed tie-break rules that are applied iteratively until a clear decision is arrived at.

Form Deductions

Each move in a 10-bounce routine has the potential to earn 1.0 mark for quality of form. As mentioned above, up to 0.5 can be lost for failure to satisfy the judges that the move was performed perfectly. There is a comprehensive table of deduction guidelines used by judges here in this website.

It is worth pointing out here that there are no specific guidelines for, for example, front drop or seat drop – assessment of these moves is made on the basis of how straight the body line is in the air, whether arms/fingers and legs/toes are all pointing in the right directions etc… – the table of deductions allow for all these aspects to be assessed.

However, before we start looking at these ‘what is a move?’ Strictly speaking a move comprises a single contact with the trampoline and starts as the performer leaves the trampoline after a prior move and finishes when they next contact it. A front drop, therefore, is a single contact – from feet to front landing – but has an implied second move being from the front landing to feet. Similarly a swivel hips, often expressed as though ‘a move’ is, in fact, three moves (i) from feet to seat, (ii) from seat half twist to seat, and (iii) from seat to feet. For new judges getting this right is often the biggest challenge. Bear in mind that all routines must start and end with the performer standing in an upright position on 2 feet!