It may make sense to only apply the moving up rule to juv girls and int ladies. Only those two levels have the big numbers.
How can USFS better develop the sport?
- Thread starter Bluediamonds09
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It may make sense to only apply the moving up rule to juv girls and int ladies. Only those two levels have the big numbers.
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Setting your opinions aside, Karne is one of the regulars on GS with whom I disagree the most, and for whom I have the greatest respect.
Karne's love for our sport is unquestioned, and in our back-and-forths, I've learned some things... and I hope I've also occasionally imparted some wisdom.
And, for the record, TSL has turned itself into a cesspool, intellectually on par with The View.
So should it apply only to girls at those levels?
Maybe only in the larger regions, since it's not so much a problem in small regions?
There is also currently a proposal on the table -- again, I have no idea how likely it is to pass -- to designate several summer competitions as a "USA Challenger Series" and to give the top 5 scorers in each section byes to their respective sectionals in addition to top 4 at each regionals.
That wouldn't solve the problem of inequity between sections, but it would help with inequity between regions in the same section and would increase the total number of skaters who get to compete at sectionals.
Creating a rule that only applies to the larger Regions only band-aids the problem. The Regions need to be balanced OR the same proportion of skaters from each Region needs to advance Sectionals.
I do like the concept of the USA Challenger Series which rewards consistency. Consistency seems to be lacking in the top ladies right now so this pushed it from a young age.
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In your opinion. TSL can't be that bad intellectually, for it to have prompted his thoughtful discussion. I am personally not so bothered and distracted by the tone that I miss out on the sometimes genuinely interesting and important discussion. But your own opinion of it isn't characteristic of everyone's experience, so your statement of opinion as if it is a declaration of fact comes off as pretty judgemental of those of us who like TSL.
Agree that an internal Challenger series for the lower levels could really do some good. Let's get skaters to deliver consistently well before they will ever be at a GP series.
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Actually, that's a fair statement. I retract that section, as it is presented as fact... and not opinion. Those who enjoy TSL should carry on.
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Looking at the US women's Gym (USAG) model, Marta's implementation of training camps and overseeing the training of the gymnasts didn't always give the best results either though the gymnasts often medaled. As a gym fan, it seemed the semi-centralized plan started becoming what it is today around the 2011 season. Before hand, gymnasts often came to the biggest events overtrained (worrying more about qualifying and were spent mentally and physically by the time Worlds and the Olympics came) and mentally exhausted. Furthermore, a lot of mind games were/are noted and many great gymnasts quit or decided to drop out the elite track altogether. Luckily, there were just enough elites to field a team of world contenders even during the lowest points.
Many, outside the few who came away with gold, have left the sport sickened, bitter, and angry at the sport. This is where Dave's chosen way to express his feelings confuses me because on one hand, he wants USFS to better appreciate and mold certain promising skaters that they do have and how they should market select personalities, but then he makes remarks about how so-and-so will never be medal contenders so how the USFS shouldn't be promoting certain skaters as "saviors" but I find that if a federation will be more active in molding and marketing as he suggested, then how can they not give off the impression of favoritism and giving off the impression that certain select skaters are being chosen by the fed as "saviors". Compared to USFS, gymnasts are treated as much more disposable and are dropped once they outlived their usefulness (especially if a younger gymnast becomes of age during the Olympic year and hit the right physical peak at the right time) with USAG, especially under Marta. There's also a cultural observation that under Marta, USAG, with some exceptions, has favored safe, if uninspiring gymnasts, rather than adapting to other sorts of gymnasts who may not do as well under being constant watch by Marta and having to go to a training camp in Houston every month. In skating, part of the thrill is seeing an personalities and different and diverse artistic temperaments (even if we think they have all gone through too many media training seminars or if some are boring), and adopting the Marta approach may make the skaters more successful and consistent but a bit more cookie-cutter and homogeneous in style. However, that's another debate.
The funny thing is that one of Dave's points is to have skaters compete more internationally and gain reputation and experience when Marta was famous for NEVER having American gymnasts go to big international meetings outside of Worlds/Olympics. She pretty much keeps them hidden aside from the annual American Cup (Scam Cup as fans call it as it's usually pro-American scoring) and maybe Jesolo here and there. Other World Cups, Americans gymnasts don't tend to participate at all. Marta finds it more advantageous if she keeps them hidden away at the training (death) camps. This has lead to some needless errors in the past where gymnasts lost major points due to not reading the rule changes well, etc.
What has also really helped US women's gymnastics succeed is that their biggest competition has faltered to the point where some aren't even qualifying full teams to the Olympics anymore. Romania has gone through a real change and girls/women there are no longer flocking to gymnastics training camps. China's centralized system has shown it cannot adapt to the changes in the scoring system (like when they took away all the points gymnasts can gather for pirouetting on uneven bars). Russia hasn't been the system it once was when they were undefeated Olympic champions during the Soviet era and are struggling having to rely on veterans past physical peak but due to the state of the rest of the world can still win medals. Ukraine is no longer a gymnastics entity to consider. Belarus is not either. Bulgaria's women's artistic gymnastics program pretty much died off. Germany, France, and Spain have contenders here and there, but were never fielding teams that would be competitive. Japan has major success with its men's program but I don't think the women's program runs much differently but they as a team haven't quite hit the mark yet though have came close. Australia is having issues with a major training camp closing (or in danger of closing) and are desperate for a national team coordinator that they have signed up Aly Raisman's coach who will stay in the U.S. despite being hired as head of the Australian program. GBR and now the NED are getting there. What has immensely helped Marta is that there is no longer real competition, but it is a testament to US Gym and Marta that they kept up the high standard. When there was closer competition, we saw the cons of such a system much better. In fact, from 2001-2010 (some argue now), fans have noted that Marta's system squandered the depth that no other country had and repeatedly missed opportunities to achieve better results or get better performances from American gymnasts and that she lucked out that US Gym simply had more depth and therefore athletes to replace ones that broke or quit.
There's no question now that US gymnastics is unrivaled until their traditional competitors fix their systems and garner more participants and mold them correctly or the newer gymnastics contenders start hitting their stride. I think the USFS has a lot to learn and luckily USAG has already gone through the growing pains with Marta to know what may work best in the semi-centralized system and what doesn't. However, the sports are extremely different, have different cultures, and different needs (scoring, basic training, funding, ages in which skaters hit their peak, international politicking, etc.) so USFS will also have to take all of that into account if it wants to implement something similar.
With all the success of USAG (and it took them more than a decade to finally embrace YouTube and provide free content when beforehand they, unlike USFS, were actively pulling fan recorded videos of competitions, even lower level ones), it still remains to be seen if gymnastics is any more popular than figure skating is right now. This is not a statement that the USFS is doing a fine job as of right now and should keep doing what its doing nor is it a statement that the USFS shouldn't adopt USAG's improved marketing strategies, but I still think gymnastics isn't any more popular or successful with the public and in terms of marketing and reaching out to broad audiences that US figure skating is right now.
Many, outside the few who came away with gold, have left the sport sickened, bitter, and angry at the sport. This is where Dave's chosen way to express his feelings confuses me because on one hand, he wants USFS to better appreciate and mold certain promising skaters that they do have and how they should market select personalities, but then he makes remarks about how so-and-so will never be medal contenders so how the USFS shouldn't be promoting certain skaters as "saviors" but I find that if a federation will be more active in molding and marketing as he suggested, then how can they not give off the impression of favoritism and giving off the impression that certain select skaters are being chosen by the fed as "saviors". Compared to USFS, gymnasts are treated as much more disposable and are dropped once they outlived their usefulness (especially if a younger gymnast becomes of age during the Olympic year and hit the right physical peak at the right time) with USAG, especially under Marta. There's also a cultural observation that under Marta, USAG, with some exceptions, has favored safe, if uninspiring gymnasts, rather than adapting to other sorts of gymnasts who may not do as well under being constant watch by Marta and having to go to a training camp in Houston every month. In skating, part of the thrill is seeing an personalities and different and diverse artistic temperaments (even if we think they have all gone through too many media training seminars or if some are boring), and adopting the Marta approach may make the skaters more successful and consistent but a bit more cookie-cutter and homogeneous in style. However, that's another debate.
The funny thing is that one of Dave's points is to have skaters compete more internationally and gain reputation and experience when Marta was famous for NEVER having American gymnasts go to big international meetings outside of Worlds/Olympics. She pretty much keeps them hidden aside from the annual American Cup (Scam Cup as fans call it as it's usually pro-American scoring) and maybe Jesolo here and there. Other World Cups, Americans gymnasts don't tend to participate at all. Marta finds it more advantageous if she keeps them hidden away at the training (death) camps. This has lead to some needless errors in the past where gymnasts lost major points due to not reading the rule changes well, etc.
What has also really helped US women's gymnastics succeed is that their biggest competition has faltered to the point where some aren't even qualifying full teams to the Olympics anymore. Romania has gone through a real change and girls/women there are no longer flocking to gymnastics training camps. China's centralized system has shown it cannot adapt to the changes in the scoring system (like when they took away all the points gymnasts can gather for pirouetting on uneven bars). Russia hasn't been the system it once was when they were undefeated Olympic champions during the Soviet era and are struggling having to rely on veterans past physical peak but due to the state of the rest of the world can still win medals. Ukraine is no longer a gymnastics entity to consider. Belarus is not either. Bulgaria's women's artistic gymnastics program pretty much died off. Germany, France, and Spain have contenders here and there, but were never fielding teams that would be competitive. Japan has major success with its men's program but I don't think the women's program runs much differently but they as a team haven't quite hit the mark yet though have came close. Australia is having issues with a major training camp closing (or in danger of closing) and are desperate for a national team coordinator that they have signed up Aly Raisman's coach who will stay in the U.S. despite being hired as head of the Australian program. GBR and now the NED are getting there. What has immensely helped Marta is that there is no longer real competition, but it is a testament to US Gym and Marta that they kept up the high standard. When there was closer competition, we saw the cons of such a system much better. In fact, from 2001-2010 (some argue now), fans have noted that Marta's system squandered the depth that no other country had and repeatedly missed opportunities to achieve better results or get better performances from American gymnasts and that she lucked out that US Gym simply had more depth and therefore athletes to replace ones that broke or quit.
There's no question now that US gymnastics is unrivaled until their traditional competitors fix their systems and garner more participants and mold them correctly or the newer gymnastics contenders start hitting their stride. I think the USFS has a lot to learn and luckily USAG has already gone through the growing pains with Marta to know what may work best in the semi-centralized system and what doesn't. However, the sports are extremely different, have different cultures, and different needs (scoring, basic training, funding, ages in which skaters hit their peak, international politicking, etc.) so USFS will also have to take all of that into account if it wants to implement something similar.
With all the success of USAG (and it took them more than a decade to finally embrace YouTube and provide free content when beforehand they, unlike USFS, were actively pulling fan recorded videos of competitions, even lower level ones), it still remains to be seen if gymnastics is any more popular than figure skating is right now. This is not a statement that the USFS is doing a fine job as of right now and should keep doing what its doing nor is it a statement that the USFS shouldn't adopt USAG's improved marketing strategies, but I still think gymnastics isn't any more popular or successful with the public and in terms of marketing and reaching out to broad audiences that US figure skating is right now.
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- Aug 1, 2003
I disagree. To survive, the USFS must do two things:
- One is what you talk about - to develop talent that can compete at the international level. Absolutely and no doubt.
- But the other is to bring people into the sport as skaters, and retain them. For that, you need to know where the money is - and that's not in developing elite level skaters. It's in keeping kids in the sport past the point where they know they won't be going to the big competitions, and also getting and keeping adults in the sport. And this is an area that USFS has been working on for a bit, relatively recently and with some success, and they have plans to expand and continue.
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- Aug 1, 2003
It's already a bit difficult in the current regions, with the distances involved. Here's the USFS "map" of which states belong to which regions and sections, for those who don't have all this stuff memorized (such as myself):
http://www.usfsa.org/Shell?id=58715
It's currently the case that, for example, Soutwesterns could include skaters from as far from each other as Colorado and Louisiana. If you were to rework the regions and sections, you probably couldn't make some, for example, section bigger to fit in more skaters (such as Pacifics) without having to really push those distances. Instead, you might have to break New England and North Atlantic down into smaller sections, and hold more sectionals... which would cost more money.
You mentioned having advancement numbers be based on all skaters at a level. How might we do that? You can't necessarily compare scores from one competition to another, purely, so I'm not sure how to do it. Maybe it's across multiple specific competitions or something? Sounds interesting, not sure how to implement.
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- Aug 1, 2003
Skating also competes against other sports and activities that are basically free or super low cost. For example, my daughter did cross country and track this year in middle school, and believe me if I say I'm encouraging her to perhaps go further with those sports, which are FREE FREE FREE (although I bought her a pair of shoes and a practice discus for less than $70 all in), and where she may be able to go further than she can in skating, and for... did I mention that these sports are free here? So while swimming, at the beginning levels, might be equivalent in cost, other sports cost much less, and they do compete with skating (and hockey, as an aside, below.)
It's hard for expensive sports like figure skating and even hockey. My local high school, which is HUGE and sporty and not poor, and has produced several recent State Champion teams in hockey, announced they are cutting the sport, starting next year. In its place, they said that they can have 3-5 teams in other sports added, for less money than hockey costs them. They said to continue with hockey, they'd need donations adding up to $68,000. Per. Year.
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- Aug 1, 2003
Garrett Lucash had started that up in the Boston area, after he retired. It was modeled on the Russian system of having group lessons even at the top levels. I don't know if it was successful, I haven't heard anything about it since.
The NHL does sponsor some hockey teams in majority minority areas of the US, but they're the NHL, and I'm not sure how much funding they provide. The USFS does give some support to programs like the one in Harlem, NYC. And I know that there are grants that programs can apply for related to this, and the grants come from the USFS. For example, Melissa and Denis Petukov's program in CT got such a grant. But there doesn't seem to be an organized program for this as there is in hockey (but, again, hockey has the NHL and their funds; USFS does not.)
No, there are not. There was talk last year of making it so that you can deduct your gym memberships and perhaps also participation in other sports (for example, coaching fees), but that didn't come to pass.
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There was a proposal a number of years ago to redo the map and make 12 regions instead of 9, but it wasn't fully thought through and didn't pass.
For example, the proposed remapping would have put Maryland and Virginia in different regions. Right now Washington FSC is one of the largest clubs in the country with rinks and members in both states, so if those new lines had taken effect the whole club would have had to reorganize.
I don't remember whether NY and NJ would have remained in the same region, but if they were to split you'd run into similar problems.
IIRC correctly the alternative approach was to take larger numbers of skaters from larger regions to Junior Nationals. It wasn't a strict percentage, but rather every region got to send top 4 and then larger regions got to send an additional 1-3 skaters in each juvenile and intermediate event (boys too) according to a formula that I never memorized.
That lasted for a while and went away a couple years ago when those lower levels were combined with "big Nationals" and intermediates again and juveniles for the first time advanced from regionals to sectionals.
What they're doing in events that have initial rounds at regionals is to take the top 4 from each group plus the 4 highest scorers of the remaining skaters across all groups to the final round. (Or are the numbers higher if there are only 2 qualifying groups, e.g., at novice?)
That helps a little in terms of getting more strong skaters to the final round. At regionals it's possible to have the same judging panel and tech panel on all the qualifying groups if there are only a few, or to split the duties between two panels if there are many, so that lessens the effect of different officials having different standards. Of course, they're still human so there's always the possibility they will see things slightly differently in the evening than they did in the morning while scoring a different group at the same level.
If they did something like that with the next highest scorers across all regions to advance to sectionals, then there would be more of an effect of which individuals happened to be on the panels. But it would be somewhat more reflective of quality than just taking the top 4 or top 7 regardless.
That is what they're proposing for taking skaters from sectionals to the proposed new/revived juvenile/intermediate national event: top 4 from each section plus top 6 highest scores among the rest of the skaters across all three sections. Again, impossible to have the same officials at the different sectionals (which usually all take place the same week), but scores by different panels should be somewhat more reflective of quality than just placement and proportion to the number of skaters who started at regionals. (Since all sectionals should have the same number of entrants or possibly 1 or 2 extra for byes or ties.)
I'm not clear about the details of what will happen with the proposal to give byes to sectionals to the top scorers in a summer series -- whether it will be based on IJS scores or on placements as with the GP/JGP. Seems like the details would still need to be worked out if the proposal passes. Again, the scores will be earned at different events with different panels, so the comparisons will not be perfect. Anyone who ends up 6th or 7th in the summer series and just misses getting the bye would still have a good chance of advancing through regionals.
Could these approaches be combined with also taking up to top 7 from the largest regions in addition to summer series byes to sectionals and next-highest scores to J/I nationals?
Even that can turn out flukey. At SA last year, all 4 the extra Juv girls came out of 1 group and all 8 of those girls placed in the top half of the final round. I felt so bad for the girl that finished in 9th since she did not make the final round but her scored were higher that several of the 1st place finishers in several of the other groups.
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- Jul 31, 2014
.... and this is a great example of the system being broken. That should not happen.
Do you have a solution to prevent it?
The way the seeding is done, most of the skaters at juvenile level are unseeded because it's their first year in qualifying competitions, and the group assignments end up being random.
Maybe they could use results/scores from summer competitions to drive the seeding, especially if some of them become part of an official series?
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- Jul 31, 2014
One thing it seems like you could do is use the planned content sheets to spread the skill level around a bit. I would think there would be some dividing lines in terms of skills that you could make sure skaters with X and Y are evenly divided and skaters with Z are evenly divided and not all in one group. Divide the skaters up into best guess skill level groups, then randomly assign the skaters in each group evenly among the groups. With a little luck and practice you should be able to have a even mix of really good, ok, and not so good skaters in each group.
Another thing could be to use a minimum scoring threshold. I.e. top four in each section advance as well as any skaters in any groups that scored higher than the lowest 4th place score. That could create unpredictability, but for this level? I think we need to try to make things at least a little fair for kids this young. Planning some flex in the schedule seems doable. You could use lowest 3rd place score or highest 2nd place score as well if that ended up working better with numbers. I think 4th or lower is the most fair, but something would be better than nothing.
Seeding could work, but at the same time, I don't like systems that for lack of a better way reward poor results. You don't want risk skaters skipping events so they can slip into an "easier" group or worse, WD after "too good" a SP, or even worse, doing poorly on purpose (which sadly has been seen on the Olympic level for seeding reason). So this is a bit of a risky situation. A better option might be to grant byes to the "clearly going to make it past round one" skaters so that their spot can be earned by someone else. In the example given, had the top four of the season already been weeded out with a bye, things likely would have been a bit more balanced.
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Maybe if the top X skaters are supposed to get byes to Sectionals, then a certain amount of skaters after X, who still have to do Regionals, could be required to be seeded somehow?
Though you'll run into skaters who can't or just don't do enough Summer Series competitions to rank high enough, whether injuries or family reasons or finances causes it.
Maybe all skaters who score over a certain score AND are not part of the top X group that gets straight through to Sectionals should be seeded. Then, while the byes would depend on multiple events, those who'd have to be seeded properly for Regionals would only need one score. This would of course be subject to scoring differences between judging panels, but that's something that would have to be dealt with regardless.
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The majority of juvenile skaters are going to be attempting doubles up to lutz, including in combinations, many of them are going to struggle with underrotations. The planned program content sheets of top few and bottom few juveniles might be identical -- the difference is that the top girls can execute that content successfully and also have better PCS, harder spins, better GOEs in general.
What the planned content can tell you is who's planning to try a double axel, which is the big trick allowed at that level. Even so, planning and successfully executing are two different things.
Recent past performance in terms of PCS and TES would be more informative about who are the strong, average, and below-average skaters in the field. But that kind of data hasn't been collected in the past -- only results from last year's qualifying competitions, and only final rounds and sectionals/nationals counted. Since most juveniles were preliminary or prejuvenile (nonqualifying levels) or didn't get out of juvenile qualifying rounds last year, there hasn't been any information to seed them by.
That's why I was thinking that information from the big summer competitions would be useful, along the lines Chemistry66 suggests.
We're talking about qualifying rounds now, aren't we? Not sections (Eastern, Midwestern, Pacific coast, which the kids already had to make it through two levels of cuts to get to)
Why would they do this?
The seeding for regional qualifying groups is a "zigzag" seed. Skaters are ranked according to last year's results if they got as far as final round at their regionals (with the level they competed last year factored in starting at intermediate -- for juvenile, either they competed juvenile last year or they didn't compete at a qualifying level). Then the top-seeded skater in the region goes in group A, the 2nd seeded in group B, etc. If their are 6 groups, then the 7th skater joins the 6th in group F, the 8th skater goes into group E, and so on back to A and turn around again until all the seeded skaters are assigned. Then the unseeded skaters are assigned by random draw.
At juvenile level, only a handful of skaters in each region might be seeded, so for practical purposes the draws are random for the whole field. What we're talking about is finding a way to get information about who the strong juveniles in the region are this year, so that the group assignments can be more equitable.
I can't see how there would be any advantage to being seeded lower or unseeded that would be worth strategic withdrawals or intentionally placing lower in an event. It's not as if the skaters can predict exactly how many qual groups will be needed at regionals (though they could make a good guess) or exactly how many skaters will be ranked ahead of them to figure out where they're likely to fall in the zigzag.
Juveniles don't have short programs anyway, although some of the better juveniles "skate up" to intermediate for SP only if they want to challenge themselves at these nonqualifying events. That wouldn't count for anything official, I'm sure.
And many summer competitions offer short program and freeskate as separate events, occasionally even scheduling the FS before the SP. So at intermediate and above, skaters might enter only SP or only FS at one event, especially earlier in the summer. Or they might sign up for both but only actually compete in one if the other program isn't ready yet.
I wonder how the proposed series would handle this for intermediate and up in terms of determining the byes. Will only competitions that offer combined events, and only the results of those combined events, be used?
That is more or less what's being proposed for the summer series: the top 5 in each section (who might or might not all come from the strongest region) will get to skip their regionals and go straight to sectionals.
But that will have no effect on how the qualifying groups are divided up for the majority of the skaters who do compete at regionals.
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Why could they not have done a carve out like what was done for Chattanoga,Tennessee.
For the extra 6 skaters, instead of using the highest scores from 3 different judging panels, why can't a new panel of judge use the Ice Network videos and and re-grade the remaining skaters. That way what same panel would be evaluating all of the skaters.
Why do all Sections have to send the same number of skaters to Nationals? Why can't they send a number that is proportion to the percent of skaters in that level that is skating in that Section vs. the National total. For instance, if there were 100 total Senior ladies signed up in for their respective Regionals, with 20 representing Easterns, 50 from the Mid-West, and 30 from Westerns, then why can't the representation at Nationals be 20% of the skaters from Easterns, 50% from the Mid-West, and 30% from Westerns.
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