"Evolution" by Tuvshintur Rashaanjav & Batmunkh Tserendash, 7th place

*updated 7/6/11

There are a lot of things that are different in Alaska. Can’t say that I’ve ever had a moose show up during breakfast or seen crazy colored bands of light race across the sky while I’ve lived in the lower 48. Also, I understand that the state government pays YOU to live there instead of the other way around!

And so it is with the awards for the Ice Alaska single and multi-block events: it’s a little different. Last year, the first year that I tried to understand what was going on, I was baffled. But it didn’t matter so much, because we didn’t get an award. In 2004, the first year that I had a chance to go to an Ice Alaska awards ceremony, I was unfortunately asleep and missed the ceremony! This year, because I felt we might have a chance to get an award, I tried to get a better handle on the unusual system.

Let me be clear from the start, however. I can only explain how I currently understand the system, but I may not have it completely right. There were a couple of things that I didn’t get when I looked at some of the scoring info, but I wrote it off to the effects of information that I didn’t have.

In general, the single and multi-block events are scored the same way. At the top, it’s pretty simple: the competition is divided into abstract and realistic categories and awards are given to the top three scored sculptures in both categories. So each year, for both events, there’s both an abstract gold and a realistic gold, along with a silver and bronze for each. After first through third, however, it gets more confusing. There are four more “place” awards: fourth through seventh and these are called “Judges’ Choice” awards. At this point, both the realistic and abstract categories are lumped together and the scores are apparently the only thing that determine the placings. For example, as far as I could tell, our sculpture, “beautiful chemistry,” had the fourth highest score among the abstract pieces in the single block. In the entire competition, again as far as I could tell, our piece had the ninth highest score. However, rather than fourth abstract or ninth overall, we were awarded sixth place. I guess the important thing to remember is that they are looking for the top ten sculptures in the entire competition. After the top three in each category, the highest remaining scores in the entire competition are used to fill out the remaining four spots. The really unusual part is that these remaining four spots in the top ten are called fourth through seventh.

There are other awards as well and these are not determined by the judges. Both events have the Ivalie Cox awards, which are “carvers’ choice” awards, one for the abstract and one for the realistic. There is also a Governor’s award in the multi-block event and this award is voted on by all the Ice Alaska volunteers.

Finally, this year, another dimension was added to the single block awards. Due to the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver and the anticipated ice carving event at the Cultural Olympic Festival, the single block competition was a qualifier for that event. Greg Butauski and Jeff Petercsak won that honor with their second place realistic piece: “Leafy Lunch.” This award was given to the highest scoring U.S. team, realistic or abstract. So certainly in that respect, all of the U.S. teams were competing against one another, regardless of whether they had abstract or realistic pieces. Interestingly, Greg and Jeff probably were not (based on the raw score graph that I saw) the highest scoring U.S. competitors. Aaron Costic’s team, winning first place on the abstract side, probably outscored Greg and Jeff, but because Aaron’s team was a mixed nationality team (teammate Martin King is from the U.K.) they were not eligible for the Olympic slot. There was a little discussion after the fact, but the point is probably moot. Olympic teams are always comprised of one nationality and never mixed. Ice Alaska had decided that both teammates were qualifiers, not just the team captain (NICA has in the past used the team captain method), so both teammates had to be from the U.S. to be eligible.

Tags: Alaska, World Ice Art Championships, competitions