Rhythmic Gymnastics Grading Day Software
Everyone performs, one assessor scores, results stay in the club if you want them there
A grading day is an in-house assessment, not a competition. Every gymnast in the group performs, nobody is cut, and the number exists to tell the coach and the gymnast what to train next. JudgeMate runs the day on the same structure as a real meet: D + A + E minus penalties, one assessor covering all three panels from a phone, and the routine total on screen seconds after the last entry. A private event has no public page at all. JudgeMate scores and publishes results; it does not issue federation certificates or run a badge scheme.
What makes a grading day different from a competition
Three things separate a grading day from a competition, and each one changes how you set the event up.
Everyone performs. There are no qualifying groups and no cut. Every gymnast in the level gets the same rotation in the same order, and the day ends when the last routine ends. Nothing in the format needs a bracket.
No eliminations. A weak routine costs points, not the afternoon. That makes the DNF status useful rather than harsh: a routine abandoned halfway still counts whatever the assessor already entered, so a gymnast who stops after losing the ribbon keeps the difficulty and artistry she had shown.
Scores teach. At a meet the total decides a place. At a grading day the split says more than the sum: 3.2 difficulty with 8.9 execution is a completely different report than 6.1 with 7.1, and those two gymnasts need opposite homework.
The arithmetic is identical either way. Each routine scores D + A + E minus penalties, never drops below zero, and shows to two decimals; the all-around adds the routine totals inside one category. JudgeMate also ranks each apparatus separately, which on a grading day is usually the more interesting table: it shows which apparatus is carrying a gymnast and which one is holding her back.
Internal levels, difficulty caps and apparatus sets
A grading day works when the level in the gym matches the level in the software. Two settings do that job: the apparatus rotation and the cap on the difficulty score.
The rotation is any subset of freehand, rope, hoop, ball, clubs and ribbon, stored in FIG order no matter what order you click. Three presets cover most days: beginners (freehand only), FIG individual (hoop, ball, clubs, ribbon) and all apparatus.
The cap sits on the category. Difficulty has no ceiling in the Code of Points, so the cap is what holds a club grading to its own scale: a D entered above it is clamped down to it. The default is 20 and the hard limit is 40, far above anything a second-level gymnast will declare.
| Internal level | Apparatus in the rotation | D cap to set | What the day is really testing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1, first year | freehand | 2.0 | body shapes, one balance held, finishing on the music |
| Level 2 | freehand + ball | 3.0 | a first apparatus that survives a whole routine |
| Level 3 | hoop + ball | 5.0 | leaps that leave the floor, catches under control |
| Level 4 | hoop, ball, clubs | 8.0 | three routines in one morning without the third falling apart |
| Junior pathway | hoop, ball, clubs, ribbon | 12.0 | the junior programme at full length, 1:15 to 1:30 per routine |
Those caps are a club convention, not a FIG rule. The Code of Points puts no ceiling on difficulty at all; what it does set is how much of it counts. A junior routine counts the six highest body difficulties and up to 12 apparatus difficulties, a senior routine eight and up to 15. Junior competition this cycle uses hoop, ball, clubs and ribbon, with rope still available for national and local international events, which is why the last row reads the way it does.
Give every level its own category. The all-around lives inside one category, so Level 2 and Level 3 rank in separate tables and nobody is compared across the two.
Running the whole day with one assessor
One assessor is enough, and the aggregation rule is why. A panel value is the mean of the scores entered on it; the highest-and-lowest trim only starts at four or more scores on the same panel, and it is a per-category switch that ships on. With one person filling difficulty, artistry and execution, each panel is simply her number.
A day that one person can actually run:
- One category per level, rotation set to freehand plus one apparatus. Two routines per gymnast keeps a group of 30 inside a morning.
- Roster first. Load participants the night before; participants can be imported from a spreadsheet instead of typed in one at a time.
- Own device. The assessor scores from her phone or tablet. Difficulty moves in steps of 0.1, artistry and execution in 0.05, fine enough for every 0.10 / 0.30 / 0.50 deduction she is already counting in her head.
- Organizer fields. Penalties are one field per routine, 0 to 10, organizer-only, and that is where a length or line call lands. DNS, DSQ and DNF are organizer-set too.
- Server side. Results recalculate within seconds of the last score, so the next gymnast starts while the previous total is already on the board.
If a second coach is free, add her as an approved organizer and she can enter panel scores as well. Two people on two apparatus halves the day without changing anything in the scoring model.
Turning an execution score into feedback for a parent
Execution is the number parents ask about, and it is the one that translates cleanly. E starts at 10.00 and the assessor subtracts what she saw: 0.10 for a small deviation, 0.30 for a clear one, 0.50 or more for a major one. Apparatus faults weigh more. An apparatus picked up on the spot costs at least 0.50, one retrieved after a step or two costs 0.70, and one that takes three or more steps, or leaves the floor area, costs 1.00.
That makes the score readable backwards. An E of 8.40 is 1.60 of deductions, and 1.60 has a small number of plausible shapes: a ribbon dropped and picked up two steps away is 0.70 of it, and three clear body faults at 0.30 each account for the remaining 0.90. A parent who hears "1.60 lost, and 0.70 of that was the drop" knows what the next training block is for.
What the platform holds per routine is the breakdown: difficulty, artistry, execution and the penalty, separately for each apparatus, plus the routine total and the all-around. That table is the record of the day.
What it does not hold is the sentence. A routine has no comment field, there is no element-by-element deduction sheet, and there is no Code of Points element database behind the difficulty box. The assessor enters values she worked out herself, and the words that go home are written wherever your club already writes them. JudgeMate scores the day and publishes the result. It issues no certificate, awards no badge and records no pass.
Private results, public results and the first real meet
Grading results are club business until you decide otherwise, and the switch is the event visibility setting.
A private event has no public page: the public results URL does not resolve for anyone outside your dashboard. A public event gets a live page a parent can open on a phone with no app and no account, and the same data goes up on the hall screen through the jumbotron view. Public is not the same as searchable. The public page is opened to search engines only for featured events, so a normal club date travels by link rather than by name.
For a first grading day with young gymnasts, private is usually right. Read the scores out in the room, send the breakdown to parents yourself, and keep the day off the open web. A ranking still forms in the background, because the platform always computes one; what you control is who outside the gym can see it.
Moving a gymnast up to a first real meet then takes three changes to the same category: raise the difficulty cap, shift the rotation towards hoop, ball, clubs and ribbon, and put four or more judges on each panel, which is the point at which the trim starts to do anything at all. Tell her the tie-break before she goes out: equal totals are split by the sum of the execution scores first, then by the sum of the artistry scores, then by the sum of the difficulty scores. Clean beats hard, and a grading day is a good place to learn it. The meet itself is covered in the club competition scenario, and the rules behind the three panels in how rhythmic gymnastics is scored.
Set up your event
Free for organizers. No athlete cap. No commission on registrations. See rhythmic gymnastics features · Organizer guide
Other scenarios
Club competition
One hall, one day, 30–80 gymnasts across age groups. A small panel, a simple apparatus rotation and results parents can read before they leave.
Invitational
Visiting clubs, a full panel and apparatus finals alongside the all-around. Live results families can follow from another country.