Am I now "that" parent?

Did you ever find out OP?

Hopefully it will be a case of the coach holding up the wrong number in the previous exercises which your daughter will then understand it was nothing to do with her performance. Something to definitely look out for in the future! When the results come back it should clarify this but I don't know how they would change scores? It's a long time since I was part of the circuit.

I absolutely would raise it. Yes, it's importance to teach resilience and for children to learn that they don't always 'win' in life. But at work, if I did a project and I didn't feel my contribution was recognised and I was marked poorly in performance, while a colleague who didn't contribute was given all the praise, yes, I would raise it with my line manager or the department. It's about learning skills for advocating for yourself and your accomplishments. If her performance wasn't scored as highly as you/she/coach thought it should be, it would be helpful to know why to make improvements in the future, if nothing else.

Do you teach your children to just lie down and be a doormat at all times? Have you never questioned anything in your life?

Of course 'life' is not fair, but processes in society should be just. Societies have long had systems, appeals processes, rights of reply to enable people to challenge where things are unjust.

My friend's son was participating in a time trial to qualify for heats. Everyone has a race number to keep track.
The way they work is that it is a staggered start with athletes setting off with a gap and then racing the course. Her son started behind another athlete and overtook him so clearly faster but the other was given the faster time and her son missed out.
Her son is now about 30 and this happened at school and it still annoys her!

Even sports that are timed versus judged have errors and it can be frustrating, unfair and hard to take.

I am not sure much, if anything, will be gained by continuing to query this.
It's over and it feels awful but I'd think moving on would be the healthiest option.
I don't think you'll ever get a resolution that you're happy with-you can't turn back the clock and change it so I think i'd let it go.

Gymnastics mum here.

Firstly, gymnastics absolutely humbles you. It can feel awful at times.

Ive seen mistakes happen, they are generally rare BUT the coach should be absolutely proactive in getting to the bottom of it so i would really push the coach.

Did you film your daughter, perhaps the coach can review that and should be speaking to the judges.

Whilst it may not have been an "important" competition as some other posters have said thats actually irrelevant, some of these girls train 16 hours a week and maybe do 4 comps a year, they work hard and deserve the respect of the judges and the coach of getting accurate scores.

Keep pushing OP!!

If a mistake has been made it should be rectified. Regardless of whether the mistake matters in the scheme of things, we are all entitled to have our efforts judged with accuracy.
If there been no error, then obviously your DD will have to view it as a life lesson, that we can't win everything; but such lessons shouldn't happen based on error.
It's also a life lesson that we can be assertive enough to (politely) question feedback we don't understand. I'm assuming that a great deal of time and not a small amount of money goes into your DDs participation in these events, so I think its reasonable to expect some feedback beyond a number.

Me too. Nothing wrong in checking, and if there was a mistake and people were sloppy with making sure they got the correct girl, then good that it is challenged.

I would be asking questions too.

It's not a distraction at all. A positive mindset does not mean blindly assuming noone ever makes mistakes or gets things wrong or is unfair.

You can do all that encouragement and positivity as well, of course you should be doing that. But your point was to lie to child and tall them they are not allowed to think obviously true thoughts, which does nothing but undermine your child and make you look like an idiot!

I never said it was character building @shammalammadingdong

But competing in gymnastics requires focus and a positive mindset, both of which are undermined by worrying if the judging process is fair. This is simply a distraction from enjoying taking part.

And a gymnast must trust their coach; it’s a dangerous sport so if they lose that trust, it will be much harder to learn new skills because they will be second guessing them.

as pps said it’s okay as a parent to ask the coach to explain what a gymnast could have done better. But the best thing for gymnastics development is for a parent to congratulate their child on their efforts - and encourage them to refocus back on their training and on their enjoyment of the sport.

As a PP said gymnastics scoring
guidelines are very very clear. Eg you can see the WAG NDP Grade guidelines here https://www.british-gymnastics.org/west-midlands/document-download/disciplines-3/womens/12540-british-club-grades/file

Not sure what your DD was competing in but her coach should be able to tell you very clearly where her 2 stars came from. And then you might find out if it was a mistake. (I have been a spectator at a major comp and two girls’ numbers/scores got mixed up - the coach and parents were quick to correct though as the results for each piece come up
on a screen after scoring.)

You're not "allowing her to think the judges get it wrong". They DO get it wrong, she already knows that. If you try and convince her that they don't, you look like an idiot!
Same for her coach, don't tell her that she has to trust him and he's infallible, she already knows he has made mistakes.

This idea that accepting other peoples mistakes is character building and good for her is just ridiculous.

There could be many reasons. For example if your Dd completed a move on beam and landed it but it wasn't neat but the other girl did it better and landed with 2 feet on the beam then fell she could end up with higher marks even though she had a fall. It does sound hard for your daughter though. I spent years watching subjective gym comps then moved on to even more subjective marking of dance comps. It can be really hard to see your Dd work and not get the marks you and she hoped for. I would agree that asking where she could have improved to get a three rather than questioning the other child's score is a better idea

Was the routine videod? I have known of very low scores in trampolining competitions being overturned if the judges were shown a good quality video and there was a clear error.

The event you describe may very well have been a mistake but without evidence I very much doubt the result would be changed.
However; I competed at national level up to 16 and I have a couple of things I would like to add. Gymnastics does foster a hyper competitive culture but here's the thing, almost no one makes it. My wonderful coach taught me several invaluable life lessons, including never to leave your self respect on the floor and that if you are a gymnast you have a physical courage that very few people possess. I've seen loads of weird things happen in competition and you really have to want to laugh at them. So respect to your dd and you and there's always another day.

She now has a choice, let it kill her confidence or let it give her "backbone" for the world of competing.

Excellent advice.

Competing is tough, so you & your DD need to work out whether it's worth it. But it should be about her goals, her achievements, not that she's better or worse than others.

Learning a difficult skill, such as gymnastics (or ballet or martial arts, or playing an instrument) is a really important life skill for DC, with all the things that acquiring & perfecting something difficult brings. I hope you and your DD can get past this, and she remains enthusiastic about her sport/art because of what it is, not the stars she wins.

Gymnastics has clear scoring guidelines, it should be relatively straightforward for them to explain why your child got what she got.

Its been a while since I've been involved in the sport, but while falls are penalised significantly, smaller form errors can add up very quickly.

It's more than possible for a gymnast with generally excellent form, but falls, to outscore a gymnast who doesn't fall. But that's a theoretical point. Only the judges know what happened in this instance.

I know nothing about gymnastics, but will the score card review be enough to clarify if things were mixed up? I mean if the score card explicitly says "fell off beam"/" put hand to ground at dismount" or something v specific like that, then of course that will be easy to disprove if you videoed it, but are the scores marked in a way to allow that, or is it a broader sort of marking, IYSWIM?

As to 'did my daughter learn anything...confidence': It is clear that she feels it is very unfair and actually brought down her confidence.

She now has a choice, let it kill her confidence or let it give her "backbone" for the world of competing.

I lost out on a gold medal in the finals of a European martial arts competition. I know that I beat the other person, I landed far more high scoring kicks, they didn't, but was still judged to have beat me by 3 points.

It certainly stuck in my throat, as I know I beat them, but there was absolutely nothing I could do, but shake their hand and congratulate them.

Well, in the Giro D’Italia 2023 ( one of the three major races in the cycling calendar) the organisers gave the mountain jersey, (best time up the hills) to wrong person. They got the transponders mixed up. The person who should have got the jersey was pretty gracious about it.

Stuff happens.

As for the difficulty in being a youth sports volunteer: yes, I can see that it is challenging. In another sport of one of my kids (soccer) I also notice however that there are situations where the coach always selects the son of close friends for the core team and other kids are left as replacement (regardless of competence). I'm not complaining about this exactly for that reason (it is a volunteer job and if I think I could do better, I should do it myself).
I don't understand your logic. You are taking significant issue with what seems to be a genuine mistake/mix-up but you are happy to go along with a situation where nepotism is accepted as the norm. I have a much bigger issue with the latter. Coaches have a code of conduct to follow and are influential in the lives of young people. We live in Bucks and had a horrendous situation with girls' netball where my DD's club tolerated huge injustice of coaches blatantly favouring their own DDs at the expense of much better players. All the girls struggled with it but my DD did particularly as she played the same position as the main coach's DD in that age group and was a much better player. She was consistently sidelined to the extent that other parents approached me about the injustice of it all. DD was hugely frustrated by it and particularly the fact that they kept losing matches because of it. We thought long and hard about calling it out and concluded that we would as the life lesson for DD was more important than whether she could stay at that club. The club's response was shocking and we were effectively refused access to the safeguarding officer. It became clear that the practice was condoned at the highest level in the club by a coach that was and still is involved at national level netball. It all turned quite nasty and DD moved to a club in the next county which was much more professional and where coaches were not allowed to coach their own DDs. DD took a little while to settle but it was worth it to fully back DD and actually walk the talk on calling out injustice.

You might also educate yourself on scoring and what deductions are given for what - a “fall” from the beam differs depending on which side / whether feet hit the floor etc etc (they’re probably coached to act in a way that reduces the potential deduction) - a “fall” may have a lesser deduction than the positive points the other child received for artistry etc - the same kids can do the same routine very differently even if they’ve got the same difficulty score

I was brought up to be submissive and always accept things, never question. I’m not sure it’s done me any favours!

Learning to live with disappointment and failure is important- as is learning to deal with the consequences of laziness or lack of preparation, or realising that others are better than you at certain things. But young people also need to learn to challenge things, stand up for themselves, push for fairness etc.

When dd got her A Level results, she was predicted A*/A/A and knew what sort of standard would get those grades. She was really surprised to get a B in history as she didn’t feel the paper had gone differently to previous ones.

However she accepted it well as she felt it was what she deserved for leaving her revision til the last minute!

We decided to pay for a re-mark, despite school’s discouragement, as the B didn’t feel right. After the re-mark she went up to an A. I’m glad we pushed for the ‘right’ result.