Mike Pederson new USFA Director of High Performance

[eac]

Can anybody give a brief description of what they think a national coach is supposed to do? I'm confused. In my experience, they do relatively little other than not dole out money. But I was thinking about it, and I can't honestly think of any reason I personally would want there to be a national coach. There are coaches all over the country, and they all have different schemes for how to try to get their fencers to win. If you pick one coach and say he's the national coach, it would probably be counterproductive, in most cases, for already-successful people from other coaches with other schemes to migrate to him just because he's the national coach. I suppose you could pick one coach to send to international tournaments and so on, but if the team is made up of fencers from a bunch of different coaches, the best you could do is probably just send the coach with the most fencers on the team, so as to have the most people have a modicum of help. But calling that person the national coach seems arbitrary and annoying anyway, and worse, they may keep their title long after they don't have any fencers at all on the team. (cf. Simon Gershon)

Also, it seems random to say that the coach is the person who's supposed to dole out the money. Coaches are good with fencing, not with money.

So what's the point?

[NNR]

The role of a National Coach can be very important--coaching at International Competitions and holding camps for the fencers attending those competitions -- eventually coaching those who make up the National Team at Cadet/Junior and Senior World Championships. These coaches are never meant to supplant the individual coaches, but rather, I think, give some structure to the US "team". This is especially true since most fencers cannot have their personal coach travel to all the necessary competitions to make a world team. The National Coach's student's on the US team is irrelevant - their willingness to travel (or find suitable strip coaches to travel with the team) and work effectively with the fencers is most important.

[edew]

Can anybody give a brief description of what they think a national coach is supposed to do? I'm confused. In my experience, they do relatively little other than not dole out money. But I was thinking about it, and I can't honestly think of any reason I personally would want there to be a national coach. There are coaches all over the country, and they all have different schemes for how to try to get their fencers to win. If you pick one coach and say he's the national coach, it would probably be counterproductive, in most cases, for already-successful people from other coaches with other schemes to migrate to him just because he's the national coach. I suppose you could pick one coach to send to international tournaments and so on, but if the team is made up of fencers from a bunch of different coaches, the best you could do is probably just send the coach with the most fencers on the team, so as to have the most people have a modicum of help. But calling that person the national coach seems arbitrary and annoying anyway, and worse, they may keep their title long after they don't have any fencers at all on the team. (cf. Simon Gershon)

Also, it seems random to say that the coach is the person who's supposed to dole out the money. Coaches are good with fencing, not with money.

So what's the point?

Cuz other countries have national coaches, so we must have, even though we might not know what to do with them.

I completely agree with your assessment. Different coaches in the US offer different coaching methodologies and that's what make the sport vibrant and diverse in techniques and tactics. Some coaches don't know how to share their club's uniqueness with other fencers (at least not in the short time prior to a major competition), nor might they want to share such information. The uniqueness is both a benefit as well as a drawback in this case. A double-edged sword, so to speak. Creating a national coach program might back-stab us intead of thrusting us to the next level. Coaches may rather fall on their swords than to reveal their personal tactics. Hope you get the point.

[heretic]

As per Mark, we will soon know what National Coaches are supposed to do. While IMO, the job description needs tweaking, based on our Olympic results, a case could be made that several did a pretty good job.

I think many will be surprised when some of the more obvious choices for National Coaching positions decline or do not apply for the job.