Age Categories: How does Digital Feis choose acceptable age ranges?
Digital Feis begins with these age categories for each feis:
- Under 6
- Under 10
- Under 13
- Under 17
- Under 21
- Under 25
- 25 & Over
When we’re gathering entries, our database puts everyone into one of these categories.
Our Head Adjudicator can also see individual ages as of January 1. She looks through each competition to see if any age categories should be split or combined based on number of competitors.
Though any dancer with a score of 80 or above can advance in Digital Feis regardless of competition size, outside organizations require a certain amount of dancers in each competition. We try to combine competitions for the benefit of the dancer — but we need to be careful about combining too large of an age range for younger dancers.
Under the 18–21 Range
Our rule of thumb is to take the age of the oldest dancer, and subtract the age of the youngest. For Beginner and Primary, if that range is 5 years or less, the competition can be combined. If the age range if more than 5 years, the competitions stay separate. For Novice and up, the range may but is not required to be extended to 7 years. Updated September 22, 2019.
Over the 18–21 Range
As adult dancers are often piled together regardless of age, our 5-year rule of thumb doesn’t apply to adults. However, if we were to receive a significant number of entries from adult dancers per competition, we would still assess the need to split age groups. Dancing when you’re 20 is quite different than when you’re 60!