Cowal Highland Gathering are pleased to announce the Judging panel for 2010 Scottish National, Scottish, Argyll and World Championships

The following judges have been selected:

Kathleen O’Donnell               Scotland

Cecilia Orr                                Scotland

Leigh-Ann Plenderleith      Scotland

Susan Robertson                   Scotland

Victor Wesley                       Scotland

Jeannette Shearer              Scotland

Marion Clow                         Scotland

Mary Munro                        Canada

Michele Young                   Canada

Sharon Farrar                     USA

Cheryl Kirby                        USA

Fiona Borcherds                Australia

The Board of Directors at Cowal would like to thank the UKA, BATD, SDTA, ScotDance Canada, FUSTA, ABHD, OBHD(SA), and SDNZ for their input to the selection process.

We would further like to confirm that the draw has now taken place for the championships to be help at Cowal this year. We would like to thank The Chairman of the SOBHD, Miss Christine Lacey, who was in attendance when the draw was made.

Cowal Gathering openly welcomes feedback on all aspects of the Highland Dancing Competition. A recent example, raised by judges and competitors a few years ago, was to investigate what could be done to split the large Junior and Senior heats into smaller sizes.

In 2007 we split the heats into 2 sections, A and B. The dancers that made up each heat were randomly selected. Unfortunately, this randomness can result in one heat being of a slightly higher standard than the other one, meaning that it may be more difficult to qualify for some dancers depending on their heat selection.

Following feedback and in an effort to ensure fairness we have changed the heat selection process as follows:
All dancers in Junior and Senior qualifying events have been sorted according their competitive championship record in the last 12 months. Heats A and B have been created based on this scoring ensuring that both heats contain an equal quality and quantity of dancers. The dancer order within the heats was then randomised.

To ensure the process is fair and not subjective this exercise has been completed based purely on the result data held at the SOBHD without individual preference.

We would like to thank the SOBHD for their input into the process.