What were these protests? Harry won the first heat - doesn't get much fairer that that. Everyone was blown away by the little grommet ripping.

After mid morning the wind swung, conditions deteriorated and judging become very difficult as minimum waves offered little chances to really get a wave that was much better than the other guys surfing at the high standard that was to be found in the latter rounds of the comp.

The only thing I can even think of that was close to a protest was one heat were the results were written on the board in reverse order, but that was simply human error and was rectified immediately.

Unless there was a formal protest lodged about something (which to my knowledge there wasn't) the only lesson young Harry may need in fairness is being beaten fair and square in a tight heat.

BenKirk said...
One Rep heat was scored/marked up completely incorrectly where my mate was given a 1st for the heat (which we were all very surprised about) but later ended up being dropped to 4th! Not ideal for someone at their first event - but these things do happen.

Yeah that was my fault, I had the places in the reverse order, sorry about that. But again, once the mistake was found we fixed it immediately. Not ideal for your mate if it was his first comp but my first error in 2+ years.

It was a long day and the hardest part to be honest was finding people to judge. Many a call of "can we get some judges please?" Saw silence, blank faces, then everyone return to conversation as if nothing had been said.

To Rob G and all the "protesters", no offence but how many heats did you judge???

[b]JBFletch said...[

Just curious, but how do you make the judging even across the board, when different people judge each heat?

Its a club comp so there is no way in the world we'd have the same judges all day. Everyone ideally is supposed to judge the 2nd heat after theirs is finished. This is the way grass roots surfing has run since day dot, which is why it's even more frustrating when the more experienced guys start complaining about the judging but won't judge a single heat themselves.

At the end of the day it's a simple club comp...

JBFletch said...

Sounds good and fare.

i missed this memo.
next round i'm in the judges stand.

Thanks mate, it's kind of an unwritten rule, which again is why it's frustrating when the more experienced guys don't judge (but are so quick to protest/winge).

JB mentioned to me that maybe we need to enforce like they do at mal comps, might be something we need to do.

when judging i like to use the poor, fair, average, good, excellent scale. where a poor wave scores 0-2, fair 2-4, average 4-6, good 6-8, excellent 8-10. that way instead of trying to think of a number for every wave i can say to myself, that was a lets say a good wave and score 7 or 8.