Mar 7-8, 2014 National IFSA Event Crystal Mt

This report almost seems meaningless when looking at the post today about the loss of Chair 6. Yet, perhaps this can serve as an eulogy.

Crystal Mountain hosted a National IFSA event March 7-8. The weather and snow heading in to the event was marginal and unfortunately only got worse. Hats off to the organizers (Chuck and Sean) for getting it in between systems.

The skiing by the kids was great, and kudos must go out to all the competitors for even skiing down Bear Pits on Saturday. It was nasty. Super nasty.

As for the IFSA, well, let's just say we have our issues with them. The title of the below video says it all..........Won't Get Fooled Again!!

Nothing more to say. Here is the video. Enjoy!

vimeo.com/88723173

And BTW - I highly suggest you turn your speakers up very loud!!

What did the IFSA do wrong?

Bad scoring - says so on the video page.

Regardless of the scoring - Kudos for the 360s!

What did the IFSA do wrong?

Hey bro. Certainly we struggled with the scoring. G had one judge on Friday's qualifiers that scored 2 points higher than the other judges, 2 full points not .2. There was not any other skier that had anything larger than a .7 difference. HUH?

And then his Sat run was lower than some folks that just skied the main chute and did not hit anything. Being fair and honest, he did motion his hand toward the ground but said he never touched it on the big 3 off the last hit. And even if he did touch his hand, it was amazing that he pulled that off, hardest move all weekend. Along those same lines, a following competitor got spun in the icy section and was skiing backward for 35 feet, yet scored the same. HUH?

I had him finishing 4th, not 7th. Yet the vagrancies of judging are, well, just what they are as we all know. So of course we let go move on.

It was perhaps the changing of the venue boundaries from Fri aft to Sat morn that frustrated us the most. Graham was ready to lay down a sick line, and one well within his abilities but they took out his line by closing so much terrain. Yes, we all know the snow sucked and the wind had closed C6 to get to the top, but the BEST snow left on the venue was below the cliffs and still soft (I skied it in inspection).

And WE believe that it was because of the smaller kids and not really because of hazard. Now, to be sure, we don't want anyone to get hurt. PERIOD. But it bothers us that there are not decisions that allow stronger skiers to showcase their abilities.

Sooooooo.............anywho. 2 days in the life, and something to learn from.

Lernr - thanks for the kudos!!

I've done plenty of ranting (not that that's what you're doing) about judging over the years but FWIW and to be clear, none of those things were IFSA issues. Venue decisions are always made cooperatively betwixt event organizers and resort's safety officials, in this case both were from Crystal who was the event organizer. IFSA is a governing body whose officials sometimes consult with the resorts on event issues but do not in themselves produce events or make event decisions.

IFSA maintains their judging protocols for the sake of safety and trying to encourage the junior comps away from being the scary huckfests they were a few years ago. Remember too that we're always going to be governed by the 'lowest-common-denominator' factor that will always dictate that the venue will be what all competitors are able to safely ski, erring on the side of caution. The TD felt that the problem with starting up high for the finals was that if a competitor were to fall above or even just below the rocks, they could slide to the bottom on that scoured slope, hence they made the safer decision. That higher start has been used in the past when the rest of the venue was less scoured.

Judging is, well, always a challenge. Large disparities in a particular competitors' scores are usually evened out in the judges meeting before results are released so that is unusual and may have been an oversight. I suspect if the JFT produced the same number of junior events as IFSA sanctioned events things would appear equally inconsistent, but with only a couple (USA) JFT's per year vs. a couple dozen IFSA's it's a lot easier to look more consistent.

The time clock is a real judge.