You, me, and an 8.3

So.

The IGC team placed second yesterday against some heavy-hitters. They won medals and so on and so forth.

Except their scores barely made it to the 8's, and occasionally, the 9's.

I judge now and I've been around gymnastics long enough to know an 8.5 routine from a 9.0. I watched a girl from another team do a spectacular vault and stick the landing. Height, amplitude, form -- it's all there. 9.3, 9.4, I thought. The score went up. 8.65.

Kathryn did a floor routine without a fall or a missed requirement. Not a 9.0 performance, but anywhere between an 8.6 to an 8.8, I thought, because that's what she normally scored.

8.0. Boom. Roasted.

She asked me what she'd done to lose 2.0, and I had to think about it through the meet. Finally I said, "I think the judge took off points for literally every step you took."

It's things like this that make kids lose interest in gymnastics. Inexplicably low scores when they do solid routines. A two-tenth difference in scores between an okay routine and a girl who was clearly much better. And as I looked around the gym, I could see that it wasn't just us. It was every team. One coach said that the floor judge did not give anyone on his team credit for a certain requirement. A dozen kids. Not one?

I don't understand judging so close to the chest. If you give someone a 9.0, and the next girl is better, you have plenty of room to go up. Hence the 9.025, the 9.050, the 9.075... Give the best their due, but don't kill the entire field in the interim.

But in the meantime, as coaches, we have a few choices. We can get pissed at the scores. (Check.) We can get pissed at the kids. And/or we can try to keep them afloat.

"I'm not even going to get an 8," Amy says worriedly before her floor routine.

At this rate, no, she won't. "Look, I don't care what you get," I tell her. "Do a nice routine and don't worry about it, okay?"

The words were by no means a magical inspirational salve, but I wanted to make it clear: sometimes, there's only so much a gymnast can do, and you have to let the rest go.