[jerf]

"For the center gate, you only have to clear it to unlock scoring, looks like then you can ignore it (other than not stepping through it)"

I believe you can see that idea in pick-up basketball when you only have one hoop; the opposing team who steals a ball must "clear" the ball by taking it back to some line (like the half-court line) before attempting to score, simulating a full court. In this case it is "intended" [1] to prevent you from just grabbing the ball from a scoring team and scoring immediately yourself. It adds some momentum to the game, otherwise it's rather unstable.

[1]: Or, if you prefer, "without this rule Speedgate would have been much less likely to survive the winnowing process and thus been found evolutionarily unfit".

[chrisco255]

Ah I didn't catch that you could score on any gate. Does the ball not change hands after a score?

[tempestn]

I found the rules a bit unclear about this, but I don't think you can score on any gate. It talks about scoring on end "gates", but it also says your team's three defenders can only travel to the offensive side of the field once you've cleared the end gate, which implies that you're trying to score on only one end gate.