Buckley Gymnastics Club

Coaches Betty, Emily and Shelley have just completed a course called the Women’s Artistic Club Judge.

Here, Betty explains more about the course and how having judging skills helps with coaching.

The first day we went through the general structure of judging, how to judge and why it is important and, during the afternoon, we then focused on judging bar.

On the second day the main focuses were on beam and floor. And on the morning of the third day we looked at judging vault.

During this process we learnt how to judge what parts of the routine were important to focus on and what gymnasts were actually judged on, how they could gain points or how they could be deducted.

Our part of the judging focuses on how well they perform and how they can lose marks.

During the afternoon of day three an exam focused on practising judging.

We were shown four videos from each piece of apparatus and we had to judge the routines as if we were judging them in competition.

The fourth day then consisted of more exam questions based on general judging points and questions on each apparatus.

The final exam was ‘code’ recognition. We were shown five videos from each piece of apparatus and we had to recognise what type of skill it was, according to a Code of Points.

Now, for those who don’t know, this is basically the gymnastics bible.

It contains all the possible moves a gymnast can do on each apparatus and they are categorised in codes ranging from A-G.

The course was intense but very much worth all the hard work.

We are now able to judge in competitions where our gymnasts compete.

It also helps us with our coaching of all the gymnasts.

We will receive our final mark in a few weeks.

Thank you to the club for the opportunity.