Judging Updates for 2025

In 2025, one of our big initiatives is to update the judging process to improve this part of the competition experience. In addition to updating our judging criteria and system, we will begin paying the judges who work events in 2025.

For competitions in the US and Canada, we will select teams of judges, around 8 per day for zippered events and about 5 per day for non-zippered events. The judges will rotate through panels of 3 judges per division. In addition to the judging exam, we will require judges to pass a typing test. In past years, we have had around 10-15 judges per day at events with no computer skills requirement, so this will reduce the team size significantly and add a technology use requirement.

These changes have the benefits of:

• Quality control - Since we will have much smaller judging teams at each event, we can be more selective with who is judging and control for quality.
  
  
• Timeliness - Running events on time, as experienced judges and fast typers move the events along.

Our criteria for selection:

• You must be a studio owner, instructor, or a past Pro finalist
  
  
• If you were a past judge with PSO, we would review your prior competition scoresheets to evaluate your ability to score and comment well
  
  
• Typing requirement of 40+ words per minute
  
  
• We prioritize based on past experience with pole, judging other competitions, and competition history
  
  
• Your adherence to PSO’s values in your interactions with others, whether online or in person

You are welcome to apply to judge if you are also competing during an event. We would schedule you for another section or day to give room for your performance time.

Some exciting updates that we have in the works that will improve the judge experience at the event: 

• You can use your own computer to access our judging system, so typing and navigation are more familiar.
  
  
• We are updating the commenting format of our judging system to reduce the amount of typing required while providing competitors with more specific feedback about each element.

The pay rate for this position is $18 per hour plus overtime, and we will schedule you for either a full day or a half day of judging. If a city has a higher minimum wage than $18/hour, we would pay the minimum plus overtime. Some examples of what you might make in the future if you judged both days of the event: 

• Northeast, a large 2-day event, would be around $450
  
  
• Northwest, a small 2-day event with a higher city minimum wage, would be around $325
  
  
• Southwest, a 1-day event, would be around $236

If you are interested in joining us for the 2025 season, please apply on the website at https://register.polesportorg.com/Event/RegisterToJudge, and we will get back to you!