Fencing parents need to up their game according to Fencing Referee Commission Chair

February 26, 2020 Donna Meyer

At the town hall meeting at JOs on February 16, 2020, several questions were posed by parents (including FP’s editor) to USA Fencing Board members and senior management on what USA Fencing is doing to improve referee training and bring consistency to refereeing performance overall.

Sam Cheris, a US Fencing Board member and current Chairman of the USA Fencing Referee Commission responded to these questions and concerns. We summarize his responses below:

the current training program for referees is fine, it is the USA Fencing Divisions who are not doing their part in encouraging young fencers to become referees and recruiting them for training
parents can help this recruitment process by telling their clubs and coaches to put pressure on their Divisions to do more to recruit referees
the high referee turnover is largely due to parents and coaches who abuse and harass referees at NACs and hound them out of the profession. Parents and coaches are the problem.
“bad behavior” from parents in sports is common across all sports, and fencing is no exception.
Codes of Conduct will be imposed on spectators (parents and coaches) to make them behave better
Parents should attend the one day referee seminar to educate themselves on what a hard job refereeing is

In short, the Chairman of the Referee Commission holds parents, coaches and the Divisions responsible for USA Fencing’s chronic problem with recruitment, training and retention of referees. Dialogue was not encouraged due to time constraints.

Here’s our take on what the Referee Commission Chair said.

Organizational Issues within USA Fencing

The Referee Commission and the Divisions are both entities authorized by the USA Fencing Board of Directors to carry out the purposes of USA Fencing as specified under the Byelaws.

So, what we have is one section of USA Fencing pointing a finger at another section, and saying “you didn’t do your job!” And this from a Board member, no less!

We are not privy to communications between the Referee Commission and the USA Fencing Divisions, if any, on the subject of referee recruitment.

But, it would be reasonable to expect the Referee Commission and the Divisions of USA Fencing to start a dialogue on how they can work together to solve a chronic problem of fencing referee recruitment.

Suggesting to parents that they tell their clubs and coaches to tell their Divisions to do more is the equivalent of pushing on string. Outcomes, at best, would be patchy.

If you are wondering how the Referee Commission and the Divisions fit within USA Fencing,

WATCH THIS VIDEO: WHO IS USA FENCING?

This 10 minute video gives you a pretty good idea who runs USA Fencing, who makes the qualification rules and policies, how referees are organized plus you’ll understand where USA Fencing’s funds come from.

National Tournaments are a USA Fencing Business - fencers and their parents are major customers and Referees are a critical human resource

As several Board members, and senior management sagely pointed out at the town hall meeting, USA Fencing runs a business with national tournaments, a very profitable one. The USA Fencing budget for 2019/2020 projects a $1.96 million cash surplus from NACs after all expenses.

The tournament service that customers buy from USA Fencing includes a referee service to fairly adjudicate the bouts.

Referees are, therefore, a very important resource for USA Fencing’s tournament business.

But USA Fencing suffers from high turnover and has difficulty retaining referee staff. Many of those who remain are frustrated and angry.

The Chairman of the Referee Commission would have us believe that parents and coaches are responsible for USA Fencing’s failure to manage their human resources. Most businesses don’t blame their customers for their staff turnover problems.

Pointing a finger at parents and coaches as a group without qualification is very problematic and misdirects energy that can be spent finding good solutions.

The typical reasons for poor staff morale and high turnover in businesses include:

poor compensation and benefits
poor work environment (yes, we do agree that the badly behaving coaches and parents need to be stopped, more later)
lack of training and mentorship
lack of cohesive culture
lack of leadership

Some of these conditions certainly exist at USA Fencing for referee resources.

Referees are a key resource, why are they treated as less important than staff in the National Office?

HR Best Practices include a good work environment and training

Incentives, Incentives, Incentives

Referees are very poorly compensated for the job they do.

We have pointed this out before in our article from May 2018, Respect the Fencing Referee, Always.

US Fencing recommends honorariums for referees based on skill level, and a flat per diem of $20 a day. This is what USA Fencing currently pays referees at NACs for more than 10 hours of work every day:

$125 per day for Level 1,2 and 3, and FIE Level A & B (these are the highest level referees)
$100 per day for level 4 & 5 referees, and
$75 per day for levels 6 to 10 referees.

Referees who are at level 6 or higher have their hotel and travel costs to NACs and SJCCs paid for by USA Fencing. A free, low cost lunch is also provided to referees at NACs and SJCCs.

Being a fencing referee requires skill and good judgment. Surely the job is worthy of reasonable compensation in recognition of what is required of a referee.

This is especially so given that national tournaments are a profit-making business for USA Fencing. It is neither fair nor right to maximize NAC profits on the backs of referees. After all, NACs are expected to make a $1.96 million surplus in 2019/2020.

There are creative ways to hire referees, pay them right and still keep a lid on costs, more later.

Note: As of the writing of this article, we understand that USA Fencing plans to increase the honorariums, but have not announced what the increases will be.

poor working conditions

By our estimates, regular NAC-going families number around 2,500 to 3,000 families. When the Chairman of the Referee Commission refers to parents as a problem, how many of these families is he accusing of misbehavior? A sweeping generalization is not helpful.

That said, we are in complete agreement with the Chairman of the Referee Commission that abuse and harassment of referees cannot be tolerated. Those who misbehave, whether parent or coach, must be stopped.

Abuse and harassment by abusive parents and coaches drives many young referees to quit, and causes adult referees to view parents as clueless, ignorant and a danger. That is tragic and sad, given that the vast majority of NAC going parents are respectful throughout their time in the NAC venue.

The ball is in USA Fencing’s court to make the bad behavior stop and protect their referees.

Unlike many of those hapless local soccer leagues dealing with awful parent and coach behavior, USA Fencing is the national governing body for fencing and has far more tools at its disposal to create better working conditions for referees at national tournaments.

See NY Times article: Why Sports Parents Sometimes Behave So Badly

See: Respect the Fencing Referee, Always!

FOLLOW WHAT PRIVATE BUSINESSES DO WITH UNRULY CUSTOMERS

The tournament hall, to all intents and purposes, is a privately controlled space for the duration of the NAC. USA Fencing, as the owner of that space, has every right to impose conditions for entry into that space and for any person to remain in that space. Private businesses routinely set conditions of good behavior for their customers and remove them when they violate those conditions. USA Fencing can and must do the same.

USA Fencing has already set one condition of entry for parents, an entry fee. Additional conditions for good behavior can be imposed on all spectators (coaches and parents). Notice of these conditions can be posted clearly at all entrances to the tournament hall and on every strip, so no one can claim ignorance of the conditions.

The current Codes of Conduct can be adapted and used as conditions of entry to the tournament hall.

Failure to comply with the conditions of entry will result in immediate expulsion from the tournament hall.

Signage on every strip displaying the licence conditions help the referee when dealing with an abusive situation. They can point to it and de-personalize the situation while dealing with the aggressor.

Verbally attacking a referee for doing his or her job violates norms of decency, disrespects not only the referee but the fencers too, disrupts the environment and serves as an awful role model for young fencers.

If the situation is as bad as the Chairman of the Referee Commission indicates, then USA Fencing should hire a 2 or 3 person trained security team at every NAC to enforce good behavior. We cannot expect referees, no matter what age, to act as venue cops.

USA FEncing parent code of conduct at tournaments

spectator STANDS

The Referee Commission Chair raised the possibility of making spectators sit in stands and not strip-side. We think this is a good idea. Only fencers can sit at the strip.

There is currently overcrowding around the strips, especially during pools and the early direct elimination rounds. This raises stress and tension for everyone, and may be a contributory factor to the abusive behavior.

Coaches are allowed on strip only when their fencer is fencing.

You can carve out exceptions for parents to get closer to video a bout, but that parent must leave as soon as the bout is over.

With everyone in the stands, any parent or coach who makes a scene on strip while videoing or coaching their fencer makes a spectacle of himself or herself for hundreds of people to see from a vantage point. That, in itself, may be a deterrent factor to those inclined to vent their frustrations through misbehavior.

Training and mentorship

As a business, USA Fencing should be very incentivized to inject as much efficiency and consistency as possible into their referee training program. That’s how good businesses draw out the full potential of their human resources.

There is an enormous body of knowledge shared between all the senior referees that can be packaged and shared in a consistent way so that every new referee, no matter where they live, has access to that knowledge. Technology now enables that sharing of knowledge easily and efficiently.

NACs are also a great time to organize all sorts of mass training for referees when all your best referees are present in one place to share knowledge at no extra cost. The training sessions can be short and very focused as we recognize how stretched all referees are at NACs.

Right now, a referee’s formal training involves attendance at a one day referee workshop, followed by taking a referee exam that allows for repeated tries till you pass. The referee is then qualified to referee at tournaments subject to limitations based on their referee certification level.

Surely, this scarcity of training does not prepare a young referee, who may or may not be an experienced fencer at the NAC level, for the demands of being a referee under stressful conditions. Throwing someone in at the deep end does not yield consistent results, and is an inefficient way to develop human resources.

As the Chairman of the Referee Commission mentioned at the town hall meeting, ongoing training takes place when the new referee is placed under supervision and observation by a senior referee during tournaments. Since USA Fencing has no training program for referee instructors, how knowledge is transmitted may also be inconsistent.

While the one-to-one training mechanism would be workable when the numbers of referees you need to train is just a handful, it breaks down when the need for new referees outpaces your ability to train them one-to-one.

Further, with such high referee turnover, a lot of this individual coaching goes to waste when a referee quits due to lack of overall support from the organization.

Fielding inexperienced referees at NACs is not a great way to gain the trust of fencers, coaches or parents. Please remember that the silent majority of parents have watched their teenage fencers compete regularly for anywhere between 3 and 8 years, so many of these parents have learned to see “the action”. They know what they are looking at, and are very frustrated with USA Fencing.

In addition to a well developed systematic training program, new referees should be assigned to a permanent referee mentor who can guide them through their challenges, and show them how things work. It would certainly make a young referee feel a great deal more supported even when things are rough.

Referees also receive no training on crowd control or how to manage an abusive situation. Right now, it seems pretty Darwinian as to who survives (but is very angry) and who comes out so mauled emotionally that they walk away from being a fencing referee. For others, the risk of being abused with no tools to protect themselves against the abuse simply makes it not worthwhile to be a referee. That’s not a system, that’s chaos.

At the simplest level, the one day training program can be turned into a digital course that an aspiring referee can consume over a limited period of time rather in a full day sit-down session. All good digital course platforms allow the course provider to track completion rates, so you know at all times what your student is up to.

There are excellent course creator services who transform your material into an effective course. Many large organizations use these services to create courses for all kinds of internal training.

RAISING FUNDS TO PAY FOR A REFEREE TRAINING PROGRAM

There are also many creative ways to raise funding for implementing these digitized systems, including the implementation of a short-term referee training fee of $5 per event at NACs over a single fencing season. You could potentially raise $100,000 or more in a season. The faster method would be to set up a fundraising program with a dollar goal and a transparent and clear explanation for why you are raising funds and the outcomes you expect once you implement your program. USA Fencing has a full-time Development Director who can help with fundraising to support the referee training program. Or USA Fencing can do both.

Creating a new athlete referee track to recruit referees

NACs are filled with talented potential referees whose parents have paid their way to the tournament. Why not recruit these kids to be referees?

These fencers are currently very active in the sport, and they are attuned to seeing the “actions” because they live them everyday in training at the club and in competitions.

Starting at the cadet level, some weapons have more than 100 competitors with “A” and “B” ratings classifications who are also on the National Points List. They have the potential to be great referees in their weapons.

The conditions for athlete referees:

they are 15 years or older
they have an “A” or “B” rating classification in their weapon, they are preferably on the National Points List
they must take the referee exam and attend the referee clinic (which can be held at NACs for these athlete referees, or better yet, they have access to a digital version)

While athlete referees will be single weapon referees, they will help to alleviate the referee shortage. Since events for men and women in a single weapon are never scheduled on the same day, it is viable for the men to referee the women’s event and for the women to referee the men’s event.

Pay them an honorarium that is attractive, and they will be interested. Many of these fencers don’t step up currently because the honorariums on offer are unappealing compared against the opportunity cost of doing homework or hanging out with friends or a combination of both.

For example:

We estimate based on the number of participants and pools at NACs, that approximately 150 to 180 referees are needed on any tournament day or a total of 600 to 720 referee days over 4 days.

Assuming that USA Fencing pays airfare, hotel, per diem and honorariums to these referees, then USA Fencing’s average cost per referee per NAC may look as follows:

Airfare average RT - $350
4 nights hotel charge - $320 (assuming doubling up in rooms)
Per diem for 4 nights - $80
Honorarium for 4 days - $400 (assuming an average)
Total cost per referee for 4 nights - $1,150

The break-even for hiring an athlete referee (compared to flying in a referee) is $287.50 per day.

Which means that USA Fencing has a lot of leeway to offer an athlete referee a very attractive daily rate to work as a referee, and still end up saving money.

And fencers can recoup some of their travel costs or simply earn some extra pocket money by working as a referee for a day or two.

Note: For planning purposes, USA Fencing can create a section in the NAC registration process for a fencer to indicate their interest in being an athlete referee for the NAC tournament the fencer just signed up for.

conclusion

USA Fencing can do a great deal more for referees without its’ leadership pointing fingers at parents broadly. That is unhelpful! You don’t build a community that way!

In reality, the number of parents who misbehave relative to the couple of thousand parents who regularly attend NACs is quite small, but a small number can have an outsize negative impact.

We do not condone abusive behavior, neither are we pleased that USA Fencing allowed the issue to fester without seeking a workable solution sooner. Unlike the local football leagues who have problems with misbehaving parents and coaches, USA Fencing has substantially more tools at its disposal to deal with the issue, and also substantially more budget to do so.

Implementing a zero tolerance policy and hiring properly trained security personnel to implement that policy would be a very good start. It is USA Fencing’s responsibility to provide referees with a safe working environment and proper training. It is also USA Fencing’s responsibility to ensure that they run a quality tournament service for their customers.

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