A young student, wise far beyond her years, said something to me recently that summed up, in a simple way, one of the hardest things about competitions.

We were discussing a competition in which she had won first place, and a friend of hers had won fourth.

She and the friend shared an accompanist, so they had been hearing each other’s progress over the course of several rehearsals before the big day.

My young student noticed how much improvement her friend had made between the first rehearsal and the competition day. She expressed regret that the judges were unaware of that fact.

“I wish that they could hear [the other student]’s recording of the first rehearsal, and see how far [that student] has come,” she expressed.

I nodded in agreement, and her mother and I exchanged rueful smiles, as if to say, “Yeah, that’s pretty much IT.”

I agreed with her that because the judges had no way of knowing the history of every student, they had to make their decision solely based on what they heard that day.

If the competition were tomorrow, the results might be different.

It follows, then, that the only recourse we have to this conundrum is to increase our consistency in performing — that is, our Repeatable Good Performance.

For ideas about increasing your aptitude for Repeatable Good Performance, check out this post: https://www.fearlessfiddler.com/2014/10/it-sounded-better-at-home-achieving-repeatable-good-performance/