Saturday, February 28, 2009

New Terminology for Judging Diving

As one of the officials selected to judge the Men's Big 10 Diving Championships this week at Purdue University, I had the opportunity (and honor) to hang out with a really good group of diving people -- namely Oscar Delgado, Woody Franklin, Amy Kwan, Don Mason, Kevin Sage and the legendary John Narcy.

In addition to our judging responsibilities; we ate meals together, we worked out together and best of all, we had a lot of fun together. One thing of particular note that we did was to come up with some NEW terms for judging diving based on our experiences while scoring these spectacular 1M, 3M and Platform Competitions.

For all examples below, we will assume the judging panel consists of seven judges -- although the same terms could be used with a five-judge panel. In diving judge "lingo", the only terms known to most diving people are:


  • "BINGO" -- When all the judges give the same score for a dive. An example would be 8.0, 8.0, 8.0, 8.0, 8.0, 8.0, 8.0.
  • "BINGO BUSTER" -- When one judge gives a score different than all the other judges for a particular dive. An example would be 8.0, 8.0, 8.0, 8.0, 7.5, 8.0, 8.0. (NOTE: Every diving judge knows that the "Bingo Buster" is sure to get some ribbing from the other judges AND rumor has it, that the judge who has the most "Busted Bingo's" picks up the tab later that night!)

Our panel of judges came up with some NEW terms that we think will making judging diving even more exciting (and possibly humorous) for the judges. Here they are in no particular order:

  • "THE 7-10 SPLIT" -- Yes, this is a bowling term but now it is also a judging diving term too. This describes a scenario where the first and last judge give the same score AND the rest of the judges give the same score (but different than the first and last judge). An example would be: 6.5, 7.0, 7.0, 7.0, 7.0, 7.0, 6.5.
  • "STRONG SIDE BINGO" -- In most cases, the judging panel is divided and positioned on both sides of the pool. With a Seven Judge Panel, one side of the pool would have FOUR judges (The "Strong" Side) and the other side of the pool would have THREE Judges (The "Weak" Side). A "Strong Side Bingo" occurs when all four of the judges on the "strong" side give the same score for a dive that is different than the scores given by the "weak" side. An example would be: 7.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.5, 6.5, 6.5, 6.5.
  • "WEAK SIDE BINGO -- This is where all three judges on the "weak" side give the same score for a dive and it is different than the scores given by the four judges on the "strong" side. An example would be: 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 6.5, 6.5, 5.5, 6.0
  • "DUELING BINGO'S" -- This is where you have a "Strong Side Bingo" AND a "Weak Side Bingo" on the same dive BUT with different scores. An example would be: 7.5, 7.5, 7.5, 7.5, 8.0, 8.0, 8.0.
  • "DIVA BINGO" -- This term describes a judging panel made up of six men and one woman where the six men on the panel "Bingo" the dive BUT the woman judge gives the dive a different score. Since the woman is always right, she is NOT considered to be a "Bingo Buster" -- rather, the six men who scored the dive differently than she did are incorrect. OUCH!!
  • "LIPSTICK JUNGLE" -- This term describes a judging panel made up of six women and only one man where the six women on the panel "Bingo" the dive and the man gives a different score. (NOTE: The man should NOT think of himself a male Diva -- rather, he is merely considered to be the dreaded "Bingo Buster"!!)

HAPPY JUDGING!!

3 comments:

Kast-A-Way Swimwear said...

Funny stuff Steve! This is Eric Teske, I use to dive at Miami and I've referenced this blog post on a blog site I maintain for Kast-A-Way Swimwear. Congrats on a full year of blogging!

Channing said...

this is hilarious! i love it!

Kirk LeCompte said...

LOL... great reminder that even judges can have fun :)