How USA Fencing's lenient rules allow parents to get away with verbally abusive behavior towards fencing referees and fencers
We describe 2 incidents here.
Incident One - july 2017
The 1st involved my 15 year old teenager refereeing at Summer Nationals in Salt Lake City in 2017. The bout was a Y14 WF direct elimination round. The parents of one of the fencers felt that a call made by the teenage referee was wrong. They (yes, both Mom and Dad) went berserk. The mom demeaned the referee in a very loud, and aggressive manner, and the dad used obscenities on the referee, also in a loud and aggressive manner. My son, the teenage referee was about to “black card” both parents. His supervising referee stopped him, and instead issued a “yellow” card to the dad only.
Even if the teenage referee was procedurally incorrect in going straight to the “black card”, the senior referee was wrong to undermine his authority so publicly. Second, because of the senior referee’s intervention and strict adherence to the rule book, this set of parents got away with very, very bad behavior. Third, given that my son was not passionate about being a referee, it was the beginning of the end for him as a referee. He felt violated by the incident and the incident violated his own standards for personal behavior, and by USA Fencing’s own rules, USA Fencing was helpless in the face of such raw aggression and they failed to protect him from abuse.
USA Fencing Rules of Competition - Penalties for spectators disturbing order
The final tournament he refereed before he quit was a regional one in the Fall of 2017. One coach repeatedly got within 6 inches of his face, screaming that he had made the wrong call. At the end of that tournament, 2 senior referees who hire referees for local tournaments asked for his number because they wanted to hire him , they told him that he had done a great job that day. But, unfortunately, at that tournament, the Head Referee paid him $75 for 10 hours of work when the local norm was $120 for 8 hours of work. That exploitation was the end for my son.
Incident 2 - november 2018
The second incident involved a fencer (the FP editor’s younger son) and his opponent’s parent. This incident took place at the November NAC 2018 during a pool bout of the Cadet MF event. The bout had concluded with a win for the fencer.
His opponent’s parent aggressively accosted him as he came off the strip, accusing the fencer of frightening his son (a 10 year old competing in a cadet event meant for teenagers aged 14 to 16) during the bout. This parent kept screaming at the fencer and accused him of not knowing how to behave and coming from a “bad” family and used all sorts of inappropriate language. Presumably, this aggressive parent expected the fencer to go easy on his 10 year old. The fencer stayed silent through the abuse. The abusive parent refused to stop even when the fencer’s mom (FP editor) stepped in and asked him to back off. This aggressive parent became verbally abusive with the fencer’s mom too.
Eventually, a coach pulled the aggressive parent off. The amazing part is that the aggressive parent thought he had every right to behave that way. A senior referee passing by ended up talking to this aggressive parent, after which he completely backed off and did not say another word to the fencer or his mom again.
The fencer, who was the aggrieved party, never got an apology from this badly behaved parent, and the misbehaving parent was allowed to remain in the venue for the rest of the day. Justice was definitely not done that day.
You can read more about USA Fencing’s issues with referee training and recruitment HERE.