If they want to change pre-preliminary to have a program option, that seems fine. Except that as a test chair, I counted on those pre-preliminary FS test to take far less time than a program and I could put three tests out at one time.
I hear you.
There may be fewer higher freestyles taken at test sessions once skaters are allowed to submit competition protocols instead, which would free up some time. But that might make the test sessions less fun for test-only judges.
And it won't save a lot of time, because the moves tests are what fill up most of the test session time.
As far as adding GOE...errrrrr...there are a lot of non-competitive or low/club skate competitive skaters who are busting their butts and their wallets to get ice time and coaching. To add on GOE might only serve to reward the skaters who already have the cash to put in to training to compete at a higher levels and put out better programs.
As I understand the proposal (correct me if I've read it wrong), judges will give -3 to +3 for the technical score ("Elements") as a whole, not for each elements separately, as well as -3 to +3 for skating quality and -3 to +3 for the program.
This will be a new way of thinking for both test judges and competition judges. I suspect that some test judges might just give up and resign their appointments, which will be a problem for test chairs in the short term.
Essentially, instead of starting a juvenile freeskate test at a standard of 3.0, judges would have in mind what a juvenile test should look like in terms of Elements, Skating Skills, and Program and give pluses or minuses for each of those general areas. So a juvenile test that would have earned 2.7 or lower for Technical Merit will now earn -3 for Elements. If it would have earned 3.0 for Technical Merit, it will now earn 0 for Elements. And it needs to have at least 0 for elements in order to pass, but there might be more flexibility in how that's achieved.
For moves tests, as I understand, the pluses and minuses will be for each move separately and will balance each other out the same way as going up and down from the passing average for each move to reach the total passing score, or not. So skaters who are close to passing standard would still have just as much chance of passing by earning extra points on some moves to make up for lower scores on other moves.
It looks from the proposed rule changes that it will not be necessary to reskate a move with what's now called a serious error if the scores for all the moves add up to a high enough total without the reskate.
I do think there needs to be a solid, rock-bottom expectation of skills at each test level.
And that will no longer be tied to a specific numerical value. Instead of going up and down from 3.5 on a novice test, judges would just be giving 0 to a just-good-enough novice move and pluses or minuses to moves that are better or worse than what they consider novice standard. But they won't have a specific number to tie that standard to. 0 on a novice move would mean higher quality than 0 on a juvenile or preliminary move, lower than on a senior move.
If anything, I'd say to loosen up the Novice MIF test -- those damn twizzles and loops, and fewer and fewer coaches able to teach them as we get farther away from figures -- so that more kids can pass the test well and be encouraged to continue on.
I guess they need to excel at the other moves on the test to earn pluses on those to balance out any minuses on the more difficult moves -- same as now, regardless of whether the scores are going up and down from 0 or from 3.5.
I don't see that this change will make it harder to pass the novice moves test (yes, as discussed in another thread that's the test with the lowest passing percentage), but it won't make it easier either. The skaters who are really good at several of the moves will get official recognition for that quality, which may make some skaters decide to wait to test.
I'm sure that more judging schools or other training opportunities will be needed. Will they also include new guidance to judges on what's "good enough" for a 0 vs. good, better, and best for +1, +2, and +3?
I have no idea why they're adding GOE to tests or grades of passing. Pass/Fail is enough. Nobody's earning a skating GPA here.
There were already numerical scores -- some skaters passed right on the passing score and some passed with higher scores. They're trying to standardize that and give official rewards for passing with higher scores.
I'm also confused as to why you would add a program for the Pre-pre FS. I entirely agree with
@Jozet - there's no reason to have a program here.
It's not required -- it's an option.
At the basic levels, I think focusing on skills is more important. I wonder if they should up the ante on skills though. Since people are doing harder skills at lower levels, we should encourage more skaters to learn the skills at lower levels.
They are. They've changed the freestyle test requirements to match the well-balanced program requirements more closely. So skaters can pass by doing the minimum that's expected in a competition program at that level (preliminary and above), or they can replace easier moves with harder ones and get higher scores that way. That also allows juveniles and intermediates who are training double axels to include those in their programs and not have remind themselves how to do singles for the test, or seniors working on triple lutzes not have to include a double in the test. But skaters who can only do the minimum jump content could still pass by doing that successfully.
It does look like they won't be able to pass unless they get at least 0 for the Elements score, so they can't balance out almost-there elements with good presentation. I'm not clear from reading the rule changes, but it may be that the skater could balance out some inadequate elements with other strong ones, e.g., a clean double jump at juvenile level could make up for a flawed axel. Or even really good spins and other single jumps?
Of course, there might be some adjustments to the proposed changes before they actually get passed, so there's not much point in trying to parse the changes too closely until after the vote.
You would just need to have another move able to be marked above the passing average to balance it out.
). Without any guidelines, I would assume judges would just mark the move at -3 and basically make it impossible to pass, at least not without a reskate, so I don't see a major change there. But I think there should be guidelines. I also think it will be problematic for the Adult MIF tests, where there are some higher level moves on each test (i.e. Pre-Juv moves on Bronze, Juv moves on Silver, Int moves on Gold) and the 6.0-based scoring at least puts the expectation into context - ex: 3.0 standard is different from 3.2. If everything is based on 0, where is the distinction between levels?
