All work and no play makes swordwench a dull girl.

I reffed a 5-team high school meet all day Saturday. It was *such* a breeze. I wound up doing girls' epee, and my biggest complaint is... that nothing happened. Oh, sure, there were some weapon failures, but that was about it. Not one actual fleche all day (though one girl actually ran at her opponents a few times, which weirded everyone out). No crossing lateral boundaries. One off-strip floor touch. I did consider carding one girl – possibly now on my list of “2 Most Annoying People in the World” – for abnormal fencing actions. Because she was just doing weird stuff. Just to freak out her opponent. If she were my child, or my student, I'd have taken her aside and b*tch-slapped her. In retrospect, I should have carded her, if only to send a warning that her stupid antics were a menace to civilized society. But other than that...

Nothing... interesting.

I'd say "en guarde. ready? fence!" and half the time, the girls would just stand there. So I'd say "fence!" again, and they would just stand there. So I'd yell "I SAID, FENCE! Do something already!" and one would step... backwards. UGH! Just wanted to stab myself in the eye with a fork. A few girls were alright, but they are the ones you see cropping up at usfa tournaments. The rest seemed pretty new to fencing, and I think they just put the timid, tall, or timid AND tall ones in epee. The sabre chicks behind me had no trouble moving around. True, I had the option of doing sabre, but they were doing this thing where they had a few sabre bouts, then a few foil bouts, then switch back to sabre... so I'd have had to do both weapons - alternating - and I flat-out refused to do the foil. It’s just not my strength, and I just don’t enjoy it. So I left that to poor Telkanuru. (Payback for his not showing up at the office?) So I got paid to do a lot of nothing, but it was still fun. And it ended 3 hours early.

Then SUNDAY. Oh my god. Sunday. All-day high school invitational, which had been rescheduled from a few weeks before. I showed up expecting to ref epee again (because originally, that's what they’d planned to put me), or maybe some sabre, but it turned out that ALL of their foil refs had flaked out, along with a few other refs. They had 2 guys show up to ref epee, 2 guys for sabre, and me... and none for foil. Oh. Crap.

Each weapon, each sex, had about 3 pools to run at once, with many self-reffing. So guess where I got stuck. Organizer (my coach) was apologetic about it, but had no choice - I was the only referee who'd ever even FENCED foil before, let alone the only one to have a ref rating in foil (my punishment for insisting on getting all weapons rated, I guess?)... so I reffed foil. All day. From about 9:15 AM to 6 PM, with a few 5-minute breaks along the way to go to the bathroom and suck down a Gatorade. Pool of girls' foil, followed by boys' foil, then girls', then boys', then girls'... I have no idea how many bouts I did. Instead of pools to direct elimination bouts, it was set up as 4 rounds of pools, winnowing down to the final 6 (plus one barrage in men's for the 6th spot). As my pool would finish up, I'd take over the pools that were being self-reffed, then move on to the next round, all the way through until we were finishing the last bout of boys as they were gathering everybody together to start the awards ceremony. Oh. My. God. By the time we were done, I was so tired, and so achy, I thought I'd pass out. I'd been on my feet for 9 hours straight, in heels and a skirt. The blue blazer had been tossed aside after it started to get sweaty in the room, oh, about an hour into the day.

The fencing was varied. I find it a lot easier to ref the men, because at least they move around. I know I blew some calls, and most, I knew as soon as the words had left my mouth. Most cases, it wasn't a big deal. I don't think anyone lost a bout because of my calls, at least. There were a few really obvious blows in the last round, and I actually reversed my call once, because one of the fencers (who won the boys'- and has won that particular tournament twice before - and I've also reffed in usfa competition, I later realized) caught me on it. He never got in my face about it, simply asked me to explain what I'd seen, and I immediately realized "oh yes, he was was going backwards, sorry, I need to reverse that call because I TOTALLY blew it" – and the opponent was fine with that, because it was the right thing to do. Both had been wondering what orifice I’d pulled that call from, apparently. Now, I know that SOME refs would smack me for reversing a call like that, but hey - it really WAS the right call to make, and I'd appreciate it if a ref would do the right thing for ME. That same fencer, btw, caught me on an earlier bad call, approached me in a non-confrontational manner, simply saying something about how Valentine's Day was coming up, and he really wanted to make me happy, and what would it take to make me happy? My answer at the time was "Get ONE LIGHT! And get en guarde." Which he then did. Including all one-light actions the rest of the bout. *whew*

As coach said later, the better fencers are able to overcome a few bad calls, so not to worry too much. I don't think I sucked. In fact, I think I improved as the day wore on - though I was pretty punchy by the end of the 9 hours. Not to mention dead on my feet - my very sore feet which wanted to be in fuzzy slippers, not nice shoes with heels. Out of maybe 4 or 5 times all day of saying "I have no idea what I just saw" 2 of them came in the very last bout.

One thing I realized later on – MUCH later – was that I called very few simultaneous attacks during the entire course of the day. In the past, I’ve know that my brain is toast and my ability to parse actions is seriously hampered when I start calling a lot of simultaneous attacks. When I call them that way, I generally know exactly which side has the attack, but I’ve lost confidence in my own judgment. So I wimp out. Sunday? Not so. Maybe it was pure adrenaline making me focus on tiny details. Maybe it was the fact that I’ve reffed so many more times, and reffed at club so often – and so much of it has been sabre – that I don’t feel the hesitation anymore. Maybe I’m finally confident enough not to question myself anymore. I certainly don’t feel nervous every time I go out there to ref now, like I used to. Even *gasp!* during a long day of f-f-f-f-foil.

Depending on how I look at Sunday, either I worked my way out of purgatory, or I balanced out being grossly overpaid for Saturday, or I got myself a hell of a lot of good experience in foil (most of it being BAD foil, but that's harder to ref than good foil). But I still had fun. Sick, huh? I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Preferably in another weapon, but still...