The following is Part 1 of a directors guide written by Frank Zamary for the Royal Arts Fencing Academy HEMA tournaments. He has generously agreed to share with the wider community, along with a few tweaks to make it read a little bit better for a wider audience.
- Part 1 – What Are We Doing?
- Part 2 – How Are We To Do It?
- Part 3 – Practical Tips
- Part 4 – How Do We Learn?
The purpose of a HEMA competition is to measure, as objectively as possible, the skills of those competing. Different rulesets set out to measure different variables, but the end goal is always to try and determine the relative levels of skill of the fencers. Fencers work hard to develop these skills, and we as judges and directors owe it to the fencers to be as good as possible at allowing them to showcase their skills. If directors and judges fail, the whole point of the tournament, to showcase the fighters’ hardwon skills, is lost. Therefore, judging and directing are perhaps the most important elements of a fencer enjoying their tournament experience.
Role of the Director
The first role of a director or judge is to keep the competitors and spectators as safe as humanly possible given the sport we are engaged in involves hitting each other with metal sticks. The second role of a director or judge is to facilitate a good fight and to make clear what the results of the skills of the competitors was to both the competitors and the spectators. Directors and judges must act as neutral recorders of what occurred in each exchange. A director or judge must remain impartial and must never act in a way that appears negligent or arbitrary. Directors especially should attempt to avoid even the mere appearance of impropriety. An example of a potential appearance of impropriety would be a director and all judges being from the same school as only one of the fencers, making it appear that there may be an unfair bias.
Fencers are putting their faith in the judging staff to keep the fight safe and to keep the fight as fair as possible and the only authority that the staff has is the faith of the fencers. Once that faith is lost, the duties of safety and impartial recording become almost impossible. Furthermore, fencers are unlikely to believe that a tournament was a success if they do not believe that the staff was accurate and fair in their assessment of the fights, which undermines the entire purpose of the competition.
It is impossible to overstate how useful it can be to your credibility to state clearly and concisely why you made a call a certain way. Even if a fighter might not fully agree with what you say you saw, it gives the fencer an opportunity to understand what was seen and to adjust to their fighting accordingly. Simply saying, “Two points Blue,” in an unclear exchange risks looking arbitrary and may make the fencers feel that you are unable to perceive what is occurring in the fight. For some fighters, this will cause them to check out of the fight and potentially the entire tournament. For others, it may encourage them to swing that much harder, thinking a hard hit will be harder to miss or perhaps out of pure frustration to attack with more force than safety would allow.
Communication
My preferred method for calling a fight is to call a very simple formula, “Colour” hit to the “Target” “X” point(s) Colour. This phrasing can be said quickly enough that in most cases you will be able to say the full explanation before the fighters have even returned to their respective corners. It gives both the fighters and the spectators all of the relevant information about the exchange’s outcome and is clear enough to everyone what occurred. I prefer to always refer to fighters by their colour during a bout for two reasons: first, it allows spectators to know who I am talking about at a glance, and second because it prevents me from appearing biased when I know the name of only one fencer (and a secret third, I am really bad with names, so colours are easier and more consistent). As an additional note, I also prefer to use the gender neutral term “fencers” or “fighters” when addressing the competitors as it avoids a number of potentially fraught situations.
If an exchange is more complex, or there is something that could have been perceived elsewise by either the fighters or the audience, you should give a more detailed explanation. “Red initial attack parried by Blue, Blue successful ripost to the arm, Red afterblow out of tempo; one point Blue.” This more detailed explanation gets into the language of the fight and gives a fuller picture of what happened. Notice that it is important to call out even hits that are non-scoring. While they may be irrelevant to the score of the match, it is important to a fighter to know that their action was seen, even if it is determined to be non-scoring (e.g. out of tempo or insufficient quality).
Conversely, it is also important to be honest when you don’t know what happened in a fight. If you are going to make a call as to what happened in an exchange, you must be able to clearly articulate what you saw and why you are making the call that you are making. It will erode the faith of the fighters if they see that the staff is unsure of their calls or is making calls that appear to be arbitrary. It is much better for the flow of the fight, the faith of the fencers, and the face of the staff to admit when an exchange was unclear. Sometimes, exchanges are unclear because of sloppy fencing, sometimes it is unclear due to bad angles or body positions. There is no shame in admitting that an exchange was unclear. Remember, you don’t want to award any points that are not clearly earned as your job is to be as objective a recorder of the action of a bout as you can be. If you can’t explain what happened in an exchange, throw it out. The phrase I use is “When in doubt, throw it out. Make them fight another bout.”
Competency
Less serious than not knowing what happened in a bout is simply not being able to see what actually occurred. This will sometimes happen because of angle or body position, as mentioned above. In these cases, it is important to be able to defer to the judge who has the better position to see the action. Remember, we are not trying to assume what we believe happened, we are trying to record accurately what was observable. Sometimes, you simply cannot see what is happening on the other side of a person’s body. In these instances, it is important to be clear about what you did see and what you could not see. If you know you saw a hit to red but you do not have a good angle to see if blue was hit, but the judge on the opposite side saw only a hit to blue but not a hit to red, this may not indicate a disagreement but simply a matter of perspective. Here it is entirely possible that both red and blue landed blows to one another and that the proper call is a double. In those cases, knowing what each other staff member was able to see is important to giving proper weight to their opinions.
As a director, if you cannot see at all what happened, but the other judge or judges were able to, you may need to defer to the other judge. In these cases, it is often wise to state aloud that you are deferring to the judge with the better angle. Any fencer worth their salt will understand that it is physically impossible for one person to have every angle perfectly covered and should understand why you are deferring to the person with the better perspective. For this reason, it is important to set you best judge directly to cover the angles that you are unable to see,
Conversely, this inability to see every angle means that sometimes you may need to be more skeptical of a judge’s calls when you know that they do not have the proper angle to see the action that they are calling. It is possible that what looks like a thrust to the body is actually a thrust to the arm, or that same thrust may actually not ever touch, but because of an arm being in the way, it looks like the kind of touch that would normally land. In these situations, you should\d give less weight as a director to the judge with the worse angle. As a judge, if you do not have a good angle, it is good to either tell the director that you did not have a good angle or to show (through hand signals, semaphores, or flags) that you did not see the action. It is also possible to show that you have seen one side of the action (blue semaphore up) but not the other (red semaphore down in the crossed position). This information coverys that you are not saying that you saw that red did not hit, simply that you do not know whether red hit.
Finally, you are, to the best of my knowledge, a human. You will make mistakes and being humble enough to admit that you were wrong will help you to maintain the faith of the fighters. If you as the director make an error, acknowledge the error and apologize. A quick acknowledgement of the error, an apology, and a correction can get the bout back underway with minimal disruption and will do more to encourage fencer’s faith in you as a director than simply ignoring the mistake.