NCAA JAS email Announcements

Hi everyone,

I hope you are all having a great summer. We have a few updates that I wanted to share with you.

1. Please help me congratulate our new Regional Assigners: (1) Rickey Stakem (Northeast) and (2) Karin Ederer (DIII/Minnesota) and her Assistant Regional Assigner, Melissa Nicholson. Their schools, along with the realigned schools for the existing Regional Assigners, will be published in the JAS Judges Manual, which will be available next month. I will send out an update once it is ready.

2. In case you didn't see the NAWGJ email that went out last week, for those of you that were unable to attend the Zoom meeting about the Supervisor of Officials and S.C.O.R.E. Board, here's the link to watch the recording - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e5WDJ5dhzshgLLfnApEj7uu6Jh398dWu/view?usp=sharing

3. We have a new NAWGJ rule due to the new Supervisor of Officials and members of the S.C.O.R.E. Board Committee positions.

To avoid a concentration of power and conflicts of interest, the NAWGJ Board enacted a rule stating that a person may hold only ONE of the following roles: (a) NAWGJ President, (b) NAWGJ State Assigner, (c) Regional Collegiate Assigner, (d) National Collegiate Assigner, (e) Supervisor of Officials or (f) a member of the S.C.O.R.E. Board Committee.

The Rationale behind this new rule is as follows:
The Women’s Collegiate Gymnastics Association (“WCGA”) has recently established the new positions of Supervisor of Officials and members of the S.C.O.R.E. Board Committee.

The National Assigner has received questions from assigners as to whether they can jointly maintain their assigner-related position and serve as the Supervisor of Officials or as a member of the S.C.O.R.E. Board Committee.

Both NAWGJ and the WCGA understand there is a possibility of the NAWGJ President, a NAWGJ State Assigner, a Regional Collegiate Assigner or the National Collegiate Assigner being selected also as the Supervisor of Officials or as a member of the S.C.O.R.E. Board Committee.

The NAWGJ President is the highest ranking position within the NAWGJ organization, vested with the power to influence, through the Board, most aspects of NAWGJ, including assigning, as well as wielding power with the WCGA, through his/her participation on WCGA committees and as a liaison to the WCGA and NCAA. NAWGJ State Assigners and Regional Assigners are given a substantial amount of power, as they largely, solely*, control whether a judge gets a perceived “good” or “bad” or “easy” or “hard” assignment. Similarly, the National Assigner is vested with a substantial amount of power by controlling assignments for Conference Championships, Division III Regionals and Nationals, Collegiate Championships, and Invitationals. For example, a judge assigned to a top 5 ranked school’s competition has a higher likelihood of receiving a good evaluation vs. a judge assigned to a bottom 5 ranked school’s competition.**  This has the potential to directly affect whether a judge can obtain the type of evaluations*** needed to be included on the postseason selection list.

Further, holding a dual role would result in a concentration of power, allowing a NAWGJ State Assigner to control State assignments and a Regional Assigner or the National Collegiate Assigner to control regular season assignments as well as ostensibly also allowing the same person to control postseason assignments through their work as the Supervisor or as a member of the SCORE Board Committee.
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*While the National Assigner oversees the process and can intervene, the assumption is that the Regional Assigners follow the rules and assign properly and do not, without evidence showing otherwise, require detailed oversight of their particular assigning duties.
**It is generally easier to judge an exceptional routine that starts from a 10.0 vs. a less than exceptional routine that may also have a non-10.0 start value or a variable start value based on the performance of certain elements and/or connections.
***The proposed S.C.O.R.E. Board system scores judges based on their distance from the “target” score determined by the S.C.O.R.E. Board Committee members for a particular event.
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Thanks for reading. Please reach out with any questions.

Kind regards,
Jenna Karadbil
National Collegiate Assigner
jfk-jas@outlook.com