Understanding Scoring

Many people have difficulty understanding their scoring, especially beginners to the sport. I’m going to go over the information here in an attempt to help everyone learn what their scoring actually tells them. This is an example from one of Ruger’s runs.

Distance: 177 yards SCT: 67 seconds Excellent A Pref 20 inch Judge: Kurt Matushek
Place Name Time TFlts RFlts WCFlts TblFlts E/F Score
Ruger/L.Freed 60.21 0 1 0 0 2 Elim

The Distance is the total yards the dog must run. This is measured by the judge prior to running the course. You will see the judge out there with a measuring wheel, checking the yardage.

The SCT:67 seconds means that the course should be completed within 67 seconds. SCT = Standard Course Time.

The rest of the information tells me that I was running in Excellent A Preferred at 20″ and my judge was Kurt Matushek.

The second part of the scoring is where people often are clueless. So I’ll explain what it means. The top row is labelled with the headers: Place, Name, Time, TFlts, RFlts, WCFlts, TblFlts, E/F, and Score. Directly below these headers will be the information pertaining to your run. Place is if you ran a qualifying run and got a ribbon placement. You would have 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th under Place. Obviously in this example Ruger did not Place. Name is self explanatory, the dogs name/owner name. Time is the amount of time it took your dog to run the course. TFlts =Time Faults, this indicates the amount of time you went over the SCT. RFlts = Refusal Faults, this will show any/every time you had a refusal on course. WCFlts = Wrong Course Faults, will show any/every time your dog went off course. TblFlts = Table Faults, which indicates any fault occuring at the table. E/F = Error/Fault indicates any errors or faults other than the previously listed ones. Things like dropped bars and missed contacts are indicated under the E/F heading. Score, will show if you were Elim (Eliminated) or if you Qualified (Q).
I hope this helps to understand the scoring a little bit. And I hope that all of you have better runs than the one Ruger ran on this day!!

~ Thanks to Linda Freed at http://agilityteamair.wordpress.com/ for the above entry~