Heh, here it goes.....
It wasn't so much about the Black Card, but what happened afterwards.
National Champs qualifiers. Girls Sabre. 3rd place bout to determne who qualifies and who doesn't. 7-7, and her opponent scores, at which point the fencer turns around frustrated, whips off her mask, letting it fly, and goes into a long string of expletives, showing no signs of restraining herself.
Out comes the appropriate penalty, score sheet is filled out, the victor signs and brings it to the Bout Committee. As I'm going through this procedure, I'm also keeping a mental count of the choice words being used, but I stop counting after 12 because she's just not going to stop. And I can't count that high, which is why I always use a paper when I ref.
As if being excluded from the event as a fencer wasn't enough, the now-spectator moves onto a different spot in the venue and continues to get louder at her displeasure, still maintaining her style of verbage. So I intervene to no avail, and she gets a spectator ejection.
Everything up to this is pretty standard routine, of course. It's what happened after that which flagged the day as an event-of-interest....
The fencer's mother is genuinely curious as to what just had occurred, and she doesn't seem to understand exactly what it is that her daughter did is wrong. So I explain to her that while participating in a fencing competition, and present in a fencing venue, the behavior as exhibited by her daughter is not acceptable, and that there are corresponding penalties.
She has this blank stare for a moment, and then walks away. Figured that was that.
Several minutes later, the event organizer/bout committee hears my report while the mother is within earshot. Upon completion of the report, the mother turns hysterical. Like, we-may-need-to-call-911 hysterical. She goes onto claim that I've caused her daughter physical and mental harm by denying her right to go to Summer Nationals, (how dare I) and now she's disappeared off to who knows where.
I resume my duty as a referee as there are still bouts that need to be finished in another event. And the event goes on.
Apparently, while the event continued, the mother had been going in and out of the venue putting on quite the drama. When the time came for the award ceremony, however, she was good enough to briefly calm herself, after which she immediately resumed displaying..... shall we say, her "interesting personality." She was quite verbose in expressing her intention to petition the USFA for her daughter's qualification to the Summer Nationals, as well as taking me to court-of-law over this outrageous atrocity.
The event organizer intervenes again to set her straight, educating her on the limits of duties and responsiblities of event functionaries as well as conditions of USFA membership and participation in its events.
The fencer's boyfriend, who, btw from my own past observations, is a fine young gentleman of a good heart and good manners, had apparently chased and accompanied the girl when she had run off. Upon their return, the mother proclaims that she is going to taker her daughter to the hospital and we are going to hear from her lawyer.
I come to find out through other sources later on that what had happened is not surprising at all, and that this is totally characterlogical of this lady.
The entire time, I figured that the mother's intention was to rouse an emotional reaction out of me as she continued to escalate the drama of the situation. I, of course, took it as a welcome practice opportunity to work on my "Mr. Roboto" persona, which made it even funnier to those who were unfortunate enough to have to witness this.
So that's just about the jist of what happened. Sorry to disappoint if it wasn't interesting enough. But perhaps it might set a precedence of legal cases borne out a referee's call in our sport?
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