JUDGING
6. THE ROLE OF THE
HEAD JUDGE
The Head Judge holds the highest position
of authority and responsibility within the
judging panel. The Head Judge’s role is to
organise, supervise and instruct the panel
of judges so that they can meet their
responsibilities fairly, promptly and efficiently.
The Head Judge’s main responsibilities are to
ensure consistency in scoring, eliminate obvious discrepancies and to advise the judges of
conditions throughout the day that may affect their scale.
The Head Judge performs the following duties:
Selection of judging panel for each event
Organises and delivers a pre-contest and post-contest briefing for the judging panel
Directs a pre-judging warm up with the rest of the panel before the event starts
Organises a pre-contest briefing to be delivered to competitors by the Beach Marshal
Assigns judges to various heats using a roster system
Allocates an official to check the manual score sheets against the computer sheets for
every heat
Helps judges establish an appropriate scale during the first heats of an event, day, new
division or after any significant changes in surf conditions
Monitors the consistency of the scale used by all judges
Assists Scoring Judges on technical matters and answers questions relating to judging
e.g. criteria, rules, interferences, scale, heat timing, wave counts, missed waves, average
scores, use of computers
Delegates responsibility when required, usually to the next most senior judge, to ensure
that every heat is properly overseen
Is the sole judge of priority one-on-one heats
Chooses the location of the priority buoy for one-on-one heats
Reports interference calls to the Contest Director, Tabulator and Announcer
www.surfingaustralia.com
53