Need your opinions
 

PN team. I am struggling with this as a competitor and a Dad. My daughter was in a surf competition this weekend, 8 years old, and we feel it was clearly unfairly judged. If you could take 20 minutes and watch this FB feed and give me your opinion on places based on rider order I would really appreciate it. I just want to see if I am way off base or should justified in my feelings.

Thanks in advance for your time and opinions.

https://www.facebook.com/dfwsurf/vid...1205452243931/

1,4,3,2,5 in that order with one taking 1st

Thanks for the reply!

Agreed.

I also think the goofy wave looks better than regular and the rope is set a bit too long. I always get nervous when people (especially kids) have to choke up that far on the rope. It becomes a potential noose.

Ironically that’s a 25 LSV too. Wasn’t real impressed but not sure how it was weighted.

I agree with the others on the order placement. Also agree on the Goofy wave being way better than the reggo wave. Never met a Malibu Wave that I thought was all that amazing. They get all the hype due to surfgate, but I think its just hype. Way more into the Supra and Centurion Waves than anything Malibu has to offer.

To be fair, who knows how it was weighted, they easily could have been running close to empty for the junior girls.

From a wakeboarder who has judged a lot of youth competitions. Just let it go. Over a long enough time scale, all bad calls balance out--Unless you develop a reputation. Then the bad calls against you will start to stack up. Practice and leave no room for interpretation next time.

This is a very easy concept for an adult to understand, our challenge through all this is conveying that message to a very impressionable 8 year old girl. All this said, we have moved on and I believe our daughter understands the situation and will certainly grow from it.

From a dad who's daughter is now in college but subjected herself to activities where you are judged - wakeboarding competitions and dance competitions her whole life. Let it go and get over it. She will get over it if you explain from the get go that she is offering to be judged and must be willing to accept the results. If you don't like the reulsts work harder, practice more etc etc.

That is not to say that sometimes the judging could maybe go another way but the judges are human and it is subjective. She wants to be a clear winner do activities with a scoreboard and a clock.

The parents who were always raging the judges at competitions were the worst and they definitely gained a reputation. Even in my daughters own dance studio and team there were constantly parents whose children were never outperformed no matter what - Always the judges fault - got old fast.

I agree completely. We did not make a stink at all at the competition. I have no problem moving forward, just trying to help the females in our family do the same thing.

I like how you didn't tell us which one was your daughter. Speaks on how it real doesn't matter, you just want it to be fair. But like others have said at 8 years old this finish won't effect her wake surf career. LOL

All of these subjective events are usually run by a small group and it can get cliquey quite quick, which I feel always impacts the results somewhat. In the end, keep working and just enjoy the time spent with the kids as 99.9% of competitors never end up making a career out of it anyway so the best takeaways are the memories and times together. The last thing we want to do is ruin those memories with sour grapes. I think they will forget about it soon enough. If it’s really bad then get out and just enjoy the sport as a family as chances are, very few are going to make their millions through sport anyway.

So our daughter is the fourth rider on the blue Gromcast board. She did not finish in the top 3. There is zero thoughts of a career in the sport by any means, so that’s not an issue at all. We have a ton of fun as a family and this past summer made a 10 day trip out of going to Wakefest in TN where she rode in the wakeboard competition and did great. The time spent together as a family is irreplaceable no doubt. What I was trying to figure out, which I have through responses in this thread that this is somewhat of a common occurrence in judges competitions and I think having fun and skipping comps is probably the answer for our family.

I did not look at the results others posted above nor did I read the posts above. I watched the video and arrived at the finishing order of 1, 3, 2, 4, 5

Here is my reasoning without knowing the exact criteria used for judging. In order:
Girl 1 - clearly the best. no question here. If she did not take first, something is wrong. She is pumping, airing the board, moving from the rear of the pocket to the front. Fantastic skills.
Girl 3 - She has skills. she easily moves from the back to the front of the pocket, goes up and down the wave, nearly falls out of the wave she is so far back but recovers and nearly reaches the swim platform. She clear understands pumping and how and where to get push.
Girl 2 - She also can move from the very rear of the pocket all the way up to the swim platform. Can go up and down the wake and reaches out and touches the wake.
Girl 4 - She is clearly timid. shallow cuts. Did not demonstrate moving from the rear of the pocket to the front of the wave. She sat in center sweet spot the whole time.
Girl 5 - Was not able to demonstrate any basic wakesurfing skills. I give her credit for trying. She needs more practice.

ok, I went back and read all the posts. I'm clearly in the minority the way I judged but here are my thoughts. One of the most important concepts in wakesurfing is the ability to move to the the back of the pocket and pump to gain speed and get to the front of the pocket. This is the basis for nearly every trick in wakesurfing. The first 3 girls in the video were able to demonstrate this. Your daughter and girl number 5 were not able to demonstrate this. I'm not an expert but I highly suspect this is why your daughter did not finish in the top 3. If she can do this, please tell her to do it in her next competition. Ultimately, it is about having fun and I suspect she will learn a few life lessons along the way.

Thanks for the feedback, Tre.

Need your opinions
 

I watched the video with my daughter who is 9 and about the same skill as #4 and we both agree 1, 4, 3, 2, 5.

I won't go through it all here, provided my assessment on FB, based on judging probably somewhere over few 1000 wakesurfing and surfing divisions/heats.
I guess the thing that most people won't say, and it is unfortunate, is the judges got it wrong, or the announcer got it wrong or somewhere in the process it the placements got mixed up. If you don't call it what it is, and don't accept it, you can't learn from it. It happens, happens more often than it probably should. Judges do get it wrong sometimes, as well as you often do not have all judges in agreement (not that they should be). We've seen major events with the placements wrong only to have to retract them in the following days or weeks. For the most part events are not biased, although this has been a problem in the past, and there has been some people calling into question results of some more recent major events. There will always be happy and unhappy people, there will always be controversy. I guess my only question is do you feel vindicated or happy that most people feel your daughter probably should have gotten 2nd place? In all honesty, you have 1 rider that far exceeds the other 4, and 4 riders that can are pretty much doing well to stay up.

Nick

Vindication is not something I was really looking for when making this post, so not sure I would chose that word. What I was really looking for was feedback and assessment to determine if the competitive water sport scene was something we would continue to encourage our kids to do. To be honest, our daughter did not ride that well for her. She somewhat froze up and rode timid so it’s a good lesson for her to leave it all out there when she is competing. That said, I do believe it was pretty obvious she was not in the bottom two riders and deserved a podium spot. The girl who finished second offered her award to ours on the spot and of course we said no way. My lesson to our kids is that is what gets taken out of this. The way our daughter kept her head up when disappointed and congratulated everyone one who did place and the sportsmanship the other girls showed towards her when she was clearly disappointed. These are way bigger lessons in life than placing in a surf event.

Looks like even if the judges didn’t get it right, you and your daughter have it right. You’ve clearly taught her sportsmanship and humility, which will take her way further in life than any surf competition ever will. Kudos!! [emoji106]

I completely agree. When I asked about the takeaway, I was sincerely just curious, not in any way judgmental. As a scientist, I am curious about everything.

I've seen parent's on the sidelines, I've seen parents get full invested, and all ranges in between, but in general it is usually the children that want to be involved and the parents are just trying to be as supportive as possible.

Yea, I am just not real seasoned at seeing my daughter be super disappointed in something that was completely out of her control. She thought she did very good and was very excited to be recognized for it. Surprisingly I was super chill about the whole situation and my wife, when we got home, was off the chain. I finally had to tell her to get over it as our daughter has accepted and moved on and it was my wife who kept making her relive it. Everyone is all good now, but I will never get used to seeing my daughter upset with nothing I can do about it, guess it’s the Dad in me.

By far the most important learning opportunity in this whole scenario is for you to demonstrate your daughter how to act in the face of what probably is an injustice. Life is absolutely chocked full of things that are not objective, that are not fair, and that are downright cruel. If you’re equipped to pass over these things, you can be happy. If each one of them upsets you and bothers you, you will carry a huge burden.

I say you turn it on its head, learn from it, I continue to enter contests and surf her little heart out. Far too many people rely upon excuses as baseline to get through life. If you can create a little human that relies upon herself to get through life, and reacts to disappointment with energy and drive, you have a major winner!

I have four kids, of widely varying athletic abilities, and the only thing I want to see them do is try hard and represent our family well In the realm of character. I could give a rip if they win anything.