First and foremost, all skaters should be aware that judges are all volunteers. They have spent countless hours of their personal time qualifying to be judges and continue to volunteer their time judging both tests and competitions.

There are two different judging systems used for competitions: 6.0 and the International Judging System (IJS).

For the 6.0 system, there will always be an odd number of judges, usually three. Each judge ranks each skater by majority within their skating group. So, if there are five skaters in a group, each judge will rank each skater from one to five. The skater with the majority of 1^st place rankings will be the winner. The skater with the majority of 2^nd place rankings will be 2^nd, and so on.

The 6.0 system is generally used for Compete USA events and many nonqualifying events, especially for pre-juvenile levels and below.

The IJS is what most people are probably familiar with. All national and international competitions, including the Olympics, use this system. With this system, judges rate the skaters two areas: technical skill and program component. For the technical skill score, skaters receive points based on the degree of difficulty of each technical element in their program. This is the base score for the program. The judges then adjust the base points depending on how well the skater executed each element. This is the Grade of Execution or GOE. The GOE can be either negative or positive. If the skater performed the element above the standard, they receive extra points. If they performed it poorly (think under-rotation on jumps), the judges will deduct points. The program component score earns the skater points for their overall skating ability and performance level.

All qualifying competitions and many nonqualifying competitions at the juvenile through senior levels use IJS. All Excel Plus programs and all juvenile through senior level singles programs at Excel competitions also use IJS. Other events at nonqualifying competitions may also use IJS, but U.S. Figure Skating does not require it for these events. The competition hosts for nonqualifying competitions make the decision whether to use 6.0 or IJS. The competition announcement will clearly indicate which type of judging will be used for each event.

Featured image photo by charissa1066; CC-BY-ND-SA 2.0; Judges’ Panel | Note the middle judge’s smile. I am not sure… | Flickr