Coaching on the strip

[edew]

Speaking of a coach from Sacramento, you might mention to a certain "Mr Smith" that he should not wear his emotions on his sleeve. He gets too carried away about the calls and acts too exasperated.

I referee at various junior events, JOs, etc., and invariably, one referee or another will mentioned "Mr Smith's" complaints about calls while we're sitting in the referees' lounge.

Overall, doesn't give his fencers any advantage in the short or long run. I sincerely believe that his actions have cost his fencers some crucial touches at times. Tell him to take a chill pill.

The most mature coaching on the side I've seen, given the refereeing situation, was by Al Carter from Swordplay in SoCal. I was fencing one of his students in the team event at the 2001 PCCs. The referee was fried from the many days at work, apparently, and couldn't call left from right. My opponent attacked, I made a terrible looking counter-attack, both lights go off, and he gave me the touch -- parry riposte, I believe was the call. Al, rather than doing a "Mr Smith", kindly asked the referee why. I rolled my eyes, but Al didn't do anything more than just quietly shake his head. I apologized to him after the bout. It wasn't a crucial bout, given our strength to the relative weakness of our opponent. Maybe Slim_Grady can comment on that, if he's back on this group.

I, on the other hand, am a very vocal side-of-strip coach, much to the distraction of the fencer. I only do this when I fence in a team event, as I don't personally coach any fencer.

[Purple Fencer]

Eric;

I'll pass that on to Al at SwordPlay tonight. I'm sure he'll appreciate it.

I've never seen him really lose his cool. He's been around long enough to know how to question a call and not get in the director's face. Even at the most upset I've seen him, the voice is always calm and the delivery non-threataning. Thus, his fencer is muchmore likely to actually listen instead of getting scared.

I've been asked to coach some of the less experienced guys during a comp and I might get a little intense, but I'm not the type to dress-down a fencer for not landing the touch.

As for coaches on the strip...it doesn't bother me. No matter how much advice, calling out or hand signals there are, it's not the coach who has to fight me. Besides, al lot of times I can either hear what the coach is saying or can see the handsignals, which are always short and to the point. if I know the coach has said to attack a particular line, I'm more ready for it.

During my DEs in foil at Nats, I saw one of the coaches aproach his fencer during the 1st period break. Since I didn't have a coach myself (Al Carter was there, but had three other guys on the strip at the same time and he was concentrating on them), I was able to focus on the coach's advise and gestures. I changed my game a little to take advantage of what I thought HIS advice was, and ended up winningf the bout.

[ 08-09-2001: Message edited by: Purple Fencer ]

[Peach]

Dave Mandell (whom a couple of people here complimented on his refereeing in Sacramento) is my favorite strip coach from FAP. He just says basic things, no specific instructions, just general things that help me keep my focus. He keeps it low key. I gave him a big hug after the 1A because he got me through a very difficult DE bout just by helping me keep my head.

On the other hand, I don't want my main coach, Mark Masters, on the strip at all. He keeps trying to tell me specific things, and somehow he times them so that I am distracted, with my attention on him instead of my opponent. I think either he's already taught me what to do in the bout in his lessons over the course of months, or it's too late to fix it now! But he is a really good coach.

--Delia

[Craig]

I really don't care if my opponent is being coached or not. If I were in contention for the national team, then I would expect my coach to be there and the accepted, standard practice is for the coach to point out actions. It's up to the fencer to execute on them.

Now, over the past couple of years I have not been formally coached, so I don't have a coach paying attention to what I'm doing during the bout. Sometimes my opponent's coach is right there and is giving actions, but that's not something that I'm going to get upset about.

If you let yourself get distracted by a coach on the side of the strip, you have lost your advantage. I would guess that (except at the highest levels) a lot of the impact of the coach at the side of the strip is more due to the negative impact to the opponent than a positive to the coach's fencer.

Cheers,
Craig

[Stryder]

edew-
Right on the money with regard to Mr. Smith.
While he is a perfectly fine coach and his results speak for themselves, his constant whining at the referee has taken away all of his credibility in that area.

Other coaches have criticized my ability but more diplomatically. I learned with the help of their advice. (Thank you, Valdek)

Mr. Smith's words are ignored by every ref' I know.
If he is your coach, know that he is not helping your case when he argues with the ref. He is not good at it.

[oiuyt]

About 4-5 years ago I was fencing (epee) at a fairly good sized tournament in the Harrisburg division. My round of 8 opponent was a member of the Puerto Rican National team who should've been beating me easily. Near the beginning of the bout, for whatever reason, he was struggling and both of his national coaches came over to start giving advice (this of course was before this was legal).

While both of his coaches were talking spanish (which I've never taken and can't understand more than adios and maybe 3 other words of) they were also unconsiously hand-signalling the actions they wanted him to take. Both of us would watch them after each touch, then he would attempt to do whatever they had requested while I did the natural counter-move. By the end of the bout they were yelling at him (still in Spanish, still with hand-signals), he was yelling back at them (also in Spanish), and I was laughing as he continued to do the requested (and therefore known to me) move each time.

I won by a comfortable margin. Clearly in this case he would have been better off had he NOT had the coaching (or had he realized that the coaching was hurting him and starting ignoring their "suggestions").

-B

[edew]

Another coach, this one from Oklahoma, is quite effective with the hand signals. At the JOs in SLC this past February, he signalled a one-two for his fencer. She did it, and scored. I refereed that bout and complimented him on having his fencers have the poise to see the coaching signals and do the action. I generally can't do that, but that's because I started fencing without a coach, so I'm more used to learning what to do while bouting.

As for the really egregious coaching on the strip, I was told about a german coach who ran up onto the strip, grabbed his fencer's arm, moved it in a circular motion (or some such motion), explaining to him what he wanted him to do...all the while the bout was -- apparently -- going on. I believe he was ejected. But it did sound rather funny.

[Catlady]

I just wanted to add that I too have heard, albeit second hand, of a case where on-strip coaching has been a disadvantage to the fencer being coached. Basically the situation was similar to what Oiuyt described. The other fencer could hear what the coach was saying to his fencer and thus knew what action was going to be next. Just my $.02.

[edew]

Many years ago (17?), I was competing in the All-Cals, an event which brings in all the UC campuses (those that had fencing programs) for competition. This one was held in Santa Cruz. The format was a big round-robin among the seven schools (Riverside and UCSF did not have teams), and then the top 6 was placed into a pool of six to determine the winner, second place, etc.

Well, I managed to squeak into the top 6 as the sixth-place person. While waiting for the final pool to start, I watched the UCSC coach, Delmar Calvert give his fencer a brief lesson. UCSC -- at the time -- was the best UC school for fencing, and that fencer was seeded #1 into the pool. So, by watching what Calvert was doing with the fencer, I worked on what I had to do against him. And I did, beating him. I lost to one guy from UCLA, and won all the others, finishing 4-1 while everyone else had at least two losses. Ka-Ching! Great to see coaches helping their fencers, ain't it!?

[Peach]

A number of times I have seen the coaches of opponents watching Mark give me a lesson at tournaments - apparently this old broad gives people more trouble than I should (Tina Jacsobson, Sada's mom and a fellow WS veteran, told me Arkady Burdan calls me "that girl," which she said was a compliment) and they want to figure out what to do with me. The funny thing is I don't think Mark has ever given me a tournament lesson that has much of anything to do with what I actually use on strip. He's just trying to get me to loosen up my shoulders and stop being a crazed squirrel.

--Delia

[oiuyt]

He's just trying to get me to loosen up my shoulders and stop being a crazed squirrel.

And therein lies the secret... your opponents should do something to get your shoulders tense, (fingernails on a blackboard?) and strew random nuts around the strip.

-B

[Peach]

Aren't random nuts already strewn around sabre strips as it is?

[Inquartata]

Originally posted by Peach:
<STRONG>Aren't random nuts already strewn around sabre strips as it is?</STRONG>

I resemble that remark!

[ 08-11-2001: Message edited by: Inquartata ]

[vegan]

Gang,
on this one I'd have to agree with craig, It's up to the fencer to do what the coach says . . . example:
A fencer from penn state being coached in the Sc Nac this year, having his coach yell, and I do mean yell actions "Show here, finish back" or "step foreward, step back, counterattack". All of this the fencer was able to simply convert to touches on his opponents.
if it's me on the strip, I like loud cheering- it put the pressure on me to do better; but I usually don't let more then one person give advice related to fencing actions at a time. Edew can attest that our team is fairly loud, and cheers perhaps a bit too much. . . .