Starting With A Perfect Score

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Starting With A Perfect Score

There are 5 areas for a judge to consider when scoring a dive. These include:

Board-work, which include the approach and hurdle or back press.

This would include good posture, smooth walking steps, a strong high hurdle. For backward dives it would include good posture and smooth arm-swing for the back press.

Takeoff

This would include a strong push into the board while still standing erect and how much lean there is at lift off.

Height, Flight, Grace

How high does the dive go? How far away from the board is it? How much control does the diver display during the dive? How high/low is the dive completed?

Form

Are there any form breaks? Are the toes pointed? How solid are the positions? How compact are the positions?

Entry

How vertical is the entry as the diver passes through the surface? How much splash is there?

This idea starts with judging all dives from a perfect score and going down from there as deficiencies arise. I tried to justify this idea years ago because it seemed so simple at the time. If you assigned 2 points for each part, it would amount to 10, which is the perfect dive. All parts of the dive are weighted equally. If a balk occurred the diver could still score an 8 after the penalty was assessed if everything else was perfect. Also the ½ to 2 point deductions would fit into this idea. Another article, "The Most Common Errors Seen In Dives" (http://www.geotities.com/woras.geo/Page_8) follows along this same line of thinking. Certain penalties will automatically take you to a different level of judging. The example would be that of a form break. A partial break in position starts with a top score of 4. If there are any other flaws, the score should go down from there. The same would be true for a complete break in position or an unsatisfactory dive. The penalty starts with a top score of 2 and could go down from there.

Parts of the rules that couldn’t be included in the above would cover over/under twisting and an almost belly flop or back flop entry. It was for these items that "A Rationale For Scoring a Dive" (http://www.oocities.org/woras.geo/Page_16.html) was developed and presented to the officials a few years ago. The biggest draw back to the idea of starting with a 10 is time. The judge would have to make all of these calculations in a short amount of time. That doesn’t seem to be a reasonable thing to do since the scores are called for almost immediately. Also in some research by the Air Force it was found that recognition was most accurate at first glance as opposed to giving more time to assess what was seen.

Other Considerations

Make sure that you continue to judge a dive until the diver passes totally through the surface of the water. It seems that some stop judging before the diver is completely submerged.

Make sure you enforce the rules equally. Some judges do not enforce certain penalties unless the referee makes the call. Once the referee makes a call, the judges are locked in on the value by that call. The referee may opt not to make a call because of his/her own uncertainty therefore allowing the judges to make that decision.

What constitutes a break in form? Most understand that a pike means that there can be no visible bend at the knees. If the legs come apart at any point during a dive, is that a form break? This is a decision judges must consider when scoring. The rulebook refers to this when describing the dive positions on Page 62 Rule 9 Section 5 Article 6, Form of the Dives (2005).

Other articles on judging are contained on http://www.oocities.org/woras.geo/. and may be of some value to improve the quality of judging at the high school level.

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