2015 Surfing Australia Rule Book | Page 55

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