Post by schlager7 on Jul 25, 2006 9:13:11 GMT -6
I read this on another site. Since I know exactly jack about sabre, I would be interested in the responses of those more at home with fencing and refereeing this weapon:
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I watched a lot of the Division 1 saber while I was in Atlanta, doing some “back seat refereeing”. I was disappointed that while I was calling most actions well enough, I was not doing well on (what looked like to me) simultaneous actions. In both Division I and the Division II pools that I watched, the referees were pulling time out of actions that I didn’t think HAD time.
Since I know one of the referees well enough to talk to him casually, I spoke to him after the Division II pool that I watched. He described a few situations in which the actions LOOK simultaneous, but because of the tempo that occurred BEFORE the actions were executed, convention has it that one fencer or the other should actually get the time.
I found this use of an unwritten convention very curious, and spoke to another referee about this the next day, as well as one of the stronger Vet fencers at Nationals. Both agreed that there are sequences of actions that saber fencers expect to have called the same way, by default. An example would be an advance lunge that is short, the attacker recovers and redoubles, and the defender cuts into the attack. Saber fencers expect that the “defending” fencer is allowed this “riposte”, provided that the cut is within the same tempo as the redoubling fencer. There seems to be little or no way for the attacker to gain time on the riposte, no matter how long it is delayed.
And this is just one of the situations that we discussed. Others are even more cryptic to me. Of course, this throws the idea of parsing out time in any logical fashion out the window. This also explains a lot of the frustration of new saber referees, who may not have access to the Secret Saber Playbook to know how all of these actions are to be called.
To make matters slightly worse, there is no agreement about all of the actions in this SSP and how they should all be called. This will result in new referees – especially foil referees attempting to call saber time – getting into a lot of trouble when refereeing strong saber fencers. This certainly explains some of the puzzled looks I’ve gotten from some of the saber fencers “B” and above. It also explains some of the politics of the strong National saber coaches who hammer new referees to pull time out of their SSP.
Definitely something to think about the next time we have a referee clinic. This definitely motivates me to do a referee workshop in the next season. I think Foil is coming along, but there is a lot of Saber referee information we need to talk about.
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I watched a lot of the Division 1 saber while I was in Atlanta, doing some “back seat refereeing”. I was disappointed that while I was calling most actions well enough, I was not doing well on (what looked like to me) simultaneous actions. In both Division I and the Division II pools that I watched, the referees were pulling time out of actions that I didn’t think HAD time.
Since I know one of the referees well enough to talk to him casually, I spoke to him after the Division II pool that I watched. He described a few situations in which the actions LOOK simultaneous, but because of the tempo that occurred BEFORE the actions were executed, convention has it that one fencer or the other should actually get the time.
I found this use of an unwritten convention very curious, and spoke to another referee about this the next day, as well as one of the stronger Vet fencers at Nationals. Both agreed that there are sequences of actions that saber fencers expect to have called the same way, by default. An example would be an advance lunge that is short, the attacker recovers and redoubles, and the defender cuts into the attack. Saber fencers expect that the “defending” fencer is allowed this “riposte”, provided that the cut is within the same tempo as the redoubling fencer. There seems to be little or no way for the attacker to gain time on the riposte, no matter how long it is delayed.
And this is just one of the situations that we discussed. Others are even more cryptic to me. Of course, this throws the idea of parsing out time in any logical fashion out the window. This also explains a lot of the frustration of new saber referees, who may not have access to the Secret Saber Playbook to know how all of these actions are to be called.
To make matters slightly worse, there is no agreement about all of the actions in this SSP and how they should all be called. This will result in new referees – especially foil referees attempting to call saber time – getting into a lot of trouble when refereeing strong saber fencers. This certainly explains some of the puzzled looks I’ve gotten from some of the saber fencers “B” and above. It also explains some of the politics of the strong National saber coaches who hammer new referees to pull time out of their SSP.
Definitely something to think about the next time we have a referee clinic. This definitely motivates me to do a referee workshop in the next season. I think Foil is coming along, but there is a lot of Saber referee information we need to talk about.