Hi!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Allen Evans  Do any Divisions require their member clubs to provide referees to tournaments? Perhaps on the basis of the number of fencers the club sends to Division events?
I'd be interested to talking to anyone in a Division that does this.
AE |
Not a division, but the Swedish Fencing Federation requires that clubs send certified refs, the number of which is calculated from the number of individual starts fielded by that club in that competition.
The formula is:
N(ref) = MIN[6;Int((N(start)-1)/4)]
Dumbed down version for the math idiots: So, if a club fields 0-4 starts, they do not have to bring any refs. If they field 5-8, they have to field 1 ref, but it is capped at 6 refs from any one club.
The number of starts is here the total number of entries, counting double entries as just double, for any one day. The required ref number has the dimension ref*days. So, if a club has 6 starts, they can either provide one ref for two days, or two for one day.
Should a club fail to provide the required refs, they are required to pay a 1000 Sw. Kr(SEK) fine for each ref*day that they lack. Nowadays, the conversion rate is about 1 USD = 6.7 SEK. A typical starting fee in a Swedish fencing competition is 100 SEK. With the exception of the really top competitions, Swedish refs are not paid for their time yet.
Clubs are permitted to trade ref*days - if one club provides an excess of refs while another is running short, they can write over the surplus to the lacking club, with the understanding that it will go the other way around sometime later. That is then regulated between the clubs, the federation takes no part in those dealings. If a club sends an excess of refs, they can not, however, get some cash for that. Nor can that ref, for that matter.
Well, that it how it is supposed to work. Until fairly recently, almost all Swedish competitions were self-reffed up to,
I would estimate, National Championship 1/4-finals. It has thought by many that this was less than optimal, and the strict requirement system - with economic sanctions - was instituted. There was significant opposition to it, though, since some said that there simply were not enough refs to go around , and that the hefty fee would stifle competitive participation, so that the net effect would be negative. In several competitions, it is so that the requirement is not enacted in full - clubs either disregard it, or clubs coming with too few refs get a rebate on the fine. The situation is however consideraby better than in the bad old days, though.
For example, my club fielded 6 starts in the South Swedish Championships yesterday. We were 3 fencers, all of which double-started in epee and sabre. All of us are epee first and foremost, but there was a warm-body requirement to fulfill. The Swedish Sports Federation requires that an individual championship event must have at least 6 entrants who post a final result, and that those must represent at least 2 clubs. That is a rule enacted by the SSF, and the Swedish Fencing Federation (SvFF) had no more say in that than any other of the 60-plus federations which make up SSF. One other club could come up with 4 sabre fencers, and two of us decided to fill in. However, one of their guys had to go off for a job trip unexpectedly, so the competition was again short. I then took the 6th slot, so medals could be awarded.
I am the only fencer in my club who has a current ref license, and in epee only. There would not have been any way for us to fulfill the regulation while at the same time allowing for the sabre to count as an medal event. If I would have skipped fencing epee and instead reffed it while fencing sabre, my ref*day would not have counted, since a ref can only earn ref days if he is not fencing in any weapon or event in that day. (That rule is strictly enforced.) It was considered unduly harsh to punish us for our reffing lack, since it was us that made it possible for the sabre specialists to get the medals. Also, we where not alone in sin, since there were maybe 5 dedicated refs, for a competition which had 62 starts all in all. Those refs worked epee DE´s, some epee poules, and all of foil.
The double fencing was quite tiring, since the epee was run as a complete 23-man poule followed by 100% promotion to incomplete L32. Sabre was 6-poule, followed by incomplete L8. I several times had to run from sabre to epee, fence two epee bouts back-to-back and a third after one minutes rest, and then race back to sabre. Since the electrical sabre stuff that the other club had brought for us was too small for me, simply redressing was difficult. Mental adjustment was difficult too. Not surprisingly, I got smacked 1-5 by a cadet who had grown up in USA
(Georgia, but not Dunwoody - forget which club) and got a C rating there. That is my 2nd sabre competition, I have had not sabre lessons whatsoever and I offered myself as warm-body filler in the 1st one too. But I did take a 2-0 lead against the guy who later on would take bronze, and is a sabre specialist!
If one considers a DE equivalent to 3 poule bouts, the format made me fence 22 epee poule bouts, 1 epee DE, 5 sabre poule bouts, and 1 sabre DE for a total of 33 bout equivalents. Lots of fencing for the 100 SEK starting fee!
Back to required reffing days: The SvFF tracks all reffing activity, bout committees are required to send in a ref report which states how many full poules, lower DE matches, 1/4finals, 1/2finals, and finally how many finals a given ref has handled during the competition. All that info is to be specified with which age category, gender, and weapon it refers to. Each ref then gets reffing activity points in proportion to how many bouts - and their level - he has handled. The ref is required to maintain a minimum activity level for each 365-day period. If he slips below that level, he is given 92 days to make up the deficit, or he will be stricken from the SvFF reffing list. If that happens, he has to retake all tests from the very beginning to be relisted as a ref. Lists of all current refs, with their total current reffing activity points in the 3 weapons, are published on the web.
The reffing committee of the SvFF has recently put out a paper on fencing reffing, it contains a lot of good thought and a well-described framework for how they think about reffing in fencing. A good read for anyone interested in reffing, especially if one happens to read Swedish at least reasonably well.
Have a nice time!
Peter Gustafsson
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