My first brush with IJS scoring

Tags

competition, IJS scoring, programs

Two weekends ago, I skated at my first competition in two years, which was also my first competition at the Silver level. It was a chance to put the program out there and get feedback before Sectionals (ack! It’s Sectionals week already!), and also my first encounter with IJS scoring.

The competition itself went… okay. I didn’t fall, I got credit for all my elements, I didn’t have a disaster skate. The scoresheet felt fair. It didn’t feel like a good skate, though, and I felt shaky throughout, like I didn’t have my blades in the ice. There were a LOT of ladies in Silver freeskate, and most of them were very strong skaters, so I wasn’t expecting a high placement; it was more about seeing the numbers for the first time and seeing where I stood.

Spins are where I need a lot of work, because my nerves completely wrecked them. My first element was a back camel (CSpB), which I managed to do but not very well, hence all the negative GOEs. The last element in the program is my camel combo spin (camel-sit-back upright) and the biggest source of stress for me; the week leading up to the competition, I lost my camel spin entirely. Aside from being hit or miss on the camel, I was struggling to hit a low enough sit position (shaky camel = no speed into position change). In the competition, the camel got credit but the sit didn’t count so I lost value on that spin (CCoSpBV).

I’m generally okay on my jumps, although I did mess up my 3-jump combination by not adding the third jump. At least I still got credit for the first two jumps in the combo (flip-loop). Unfortunately, both my lutzes got edge calls, and fixing this will be a long-term goal. My coach thinks my lutz is a good jump for me despite the potential edge call, so we’re keeping two lutzes rather than replacing with salchows. We’ve been working on getting on the proper edge, but know that I may get called on it for now.

GOEs. It’s a little shocking to see so many negative numbers everywhere! It’s a bit of a blow to the ego to see that everything you did was deemed poorly done. My loop jump was my strongest element, which got a row of zeroes, and my coach was pretty happy about that. So I think I just have to recalibrate my expectations on GOE — zeroes on everything would be amazing!

PCS. This was where I was most curious to see how I would score. My numbers ranged from 1.50 to 3.00, averaging in the low-mid 2’s. I know you can’t necessarily compare scores from different competitions against each other, but having these numbers gives me a tangible goal for the next time. *freaks out about Sectionals*

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The benefits of comparison

Tags

competition, IJS scoring, programs

I was on Youtube recently (…in that I am on Youtube every day, procrastinating) and saw a few skating videos pop up in my recommended videos list, and realized that an account had uploaded a whole slew of programs from Adult Internationals in Vancouver from last summer. I fell down the rabbit hole of watching video after video, and then realized that Adult Internationals had posted the protocols of every single program from the event. Score! (Literally! Har har.)

Which meant that I could pull up all of the score sheets alongside the Youtube videos and follow along element by element. It was illuminating and incredibly motivating, because the event used IJS scoring, so not only could you see the placements, you could see exactly how well the judges deemed every element performed, and how strong their skating skills and other program component scores added up. (Here’s the Youtube channel; you can get the protocols here.)

I’ve done something similar in past years by looking up Adult Nationals videos on Ice Network (example: this link starts out with the 2016 Adult Nationals videos) and comparing them to the results, but since the event is scored on the 6.0 system for lower levels, all we get are ordinals. Still very helpful, but it was exciting to see the Vancouver protocols and see what my event category looked like — what jumps are being landed? What kind of GOE is standard? What’s the PCS range for bronze ladies in my age group? For instance, a salchow with zero GOE shows me what a standard, acceptable salchow looks like, compared to one with negative GOE that may have had a two-foot landing, or scratchy exit, or a stumble.

That also made me realize that while I feel like I could technically test for silver freeskate within the year (in that I could probably perform the elements at a minimum level), I don’t need to be in a rush to move up to silver because I’m not all that competitive in bronze yet. For instance, I saw that almost every layback spin attempt wasn’t given credit as a layback, and instead got called an UprightSpB — and some didn’t even net upright spin points and got the dreaded dash of doom. Same with sit spints — many ladies had them in their programs, but many weren’t credited at all because they weren’t low enough. Or they had asterisks next to them indicating that some portion of a combo didn’t meet the requirements (I’m guessing it didn’t hit the minimum revolutions). And in the bronze ladies, the PCS scores ranged from about 1.25 to 2.75, with the majority in the upper 1’s. Skaters who scored 2’s were, to my eyes, pretty darn good with flow and speed.

So I’m revising my goal to competing at bronze again, and getting some amount of points for every element attempted. I’d love to add +GOEs and PCS in the 2’s as additional goals, but I think that’s still a way off from where I am, so I’ll stick to that initial goal for the moment. I haven’t decided whether or not that’ll entail new programs, but I have a few months to put things together and get working!