Contest Scores: Stories

Following up on “Contest Scores Are a Right” with some less-than-good stories:

• One of the first contests I was in, the only score info I got was at the bar the next day, with one of the producers telling me the rough point spread between the top three contestants.
• After another one, one of the board members took me into the office and let me look at my score sheets for three or four minutes, apparently doing this on his own initiative.  The score sheets had no judge names attached, of course, but one judge scored me massively lower than all the other contestants in every category.  That is one of the value points of “Olympic Scoring”, to remove likely bias.
•  I was in one where they apologized to the contestants the next day that we would not get our scores because the sheets had been lost.
• I know of another one where one of the non-winning contestants asked for her scores several times and was not refused, but was not given them either (but they would still like her to compete again next year, of course).
• The worst case was a contest where I asked for a copy of my scores and was told no, that they were not going to provide the scores “because that just causes drama.”  Hmm, by refusing to provide the scores, doesn’t that really add drama, encouraging me to wonder what you are hiding, whether the contest was fixed?  I didn’t wonder that before they refused to provide my scores, but I sure did after.  (That contest no longer exists.  They went from a contest weekend to an unspecified panel selecting the winner in advance from applications received [ahem!], and then got no applications for the round after that.)

Of note here: the International Mr. Leather, International LeatherSIR, and American Leatherman contests all provide the scores to the contestants.  Kudos to those organizations for treating their contestants right.