President’s Update
US Olympic Trials 2016
June 27, 2016
To All NGJA Members,
Following is a summary of the “behind-the-scenes” events that occurred at the US Olympic from June
22-25, 2016:
- 24 Judges Selected to Judge the Olympic Trials – unlike previous Olympic Trials where only 18
judges were used to judge the competition, the NGJA is happy to announce that we were able to
use 24 judges for this prestigious competition. Discussions began in the fall of 2015 by Dan
Bachman and myself and the decision was finalized in April of 2016. Due to this decision “9”
new judges officiated their FIRST Olympic Trials. - Congratulations to Ben Fox for being selected National Judge of the year from the Mid-West
region! - There are still many questions surrounding the 2017 Men’s Code of Points and the 2017 FIG
International judge’s course as well as changes to the FIG judge’s category system. At this time
there are no new updates on these items. The information below came from my last update
and is still the applicable for now…
a. The 2017 – 2020 course is tentatively scheduled to be held in Toronto, Canada and the
date has not been finalized at this time
b. The 2017 FIG Code of Points has been officially released. For those of you who are
interested in getting a head start on the new rules, it is now posted on the FIG website
at this link http://www.fig-gymnastics.com/publicdir/rules/files/mag/CoP_MAG_2017-
2020_ICI-e.pdf - Dean Schott and Mike Ashe (NGJA Technical VP and Technical Secretary) are working on
preparations for the fall certification courses with the help of many of the judges at the Trials.
Course materials are being developed and annual course registration is scheduled for
September. - The NGJA is working to migrate to a new membership registration and testing software
system/site. More information on this will be forthcoming in August and will make registration
and testing easier for all of us!! - The NGJA is currently in preliminary discussions with the NCAA coaches on two initiatives. Both
of these initiatives are in the early stages of discussion and development.
a. Allowing the NGJA to identify and select judges to officiate the NCAA championships
b. Developing methods to help judges more accurately and consistently apply E Panel
deductions from the COP in the NCAA program. The NCAA coaches are looking for more
consistency across the U.S. during the NCAA season and avoiding over elevated scoring.
(Along with this, we are looking at ways to bridge the gap between the 3 main programs
we serve (JO / NCAA / USAG) and how routines are evaluated.) - The NGJA will sponsor the 2016 Olympic Challenge (very similar to the 2012 version). Look for
more information in the next few days.
Look for another update in the next few month following the 2016 Olympic Games!!!
Best of luck to our men’s team as they compete in Rio, GO USA!!!
Mike Juszczyk
NGJA President