How to Direct a Fencing Bout

Good directing enables free, unrestrained fencing. The worst fencing comes from fencers “working for the referee,” whereby they are trying to conform to a capricious or confused director.

Consistency is the key to good directing. When fencers know exactly how you will respond – even when they know you won’t call certain actions their way – you enable them to fence freely.

This guide assumes a basic mastery of the rules to fencing and understanding of the sport. To learn more, visit your local fencing club and read the USFA’s rule book.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Call the fencers to the strip. Test weights and shims. If weapons fail, retest on a table (the vibrations in their hands can set off a weapon exactly set to 750 grams), giving yellow cards for any other failures. Test lames, making sure the fencers test separately (this indicates if floor-cords are plugged into the correct side).

2. Put the fencers en garde. Ask if they are ready. You needn’t wait for a response every single time, but “ready” is also not a meaningless word between “en garde” and “fence” either. If you have a score-keeper and a time-keeper, ask if they are ready. Order the fencers to action.

3. Keep yourself between the fencers – this may necessitate moving quickly. An ideal distance is 5 to 7 feet back from the strip, but work with what you get.

4. Watch the tips of the blades. In any given piece of blade-work, the tip moves the most. Watching them is the easiest way to read parries, deceptions, hesitations and other blade-work that you will have to call.

5. Call halt loudly and clearly after any signal from the box, any infraction of the rules, or any time you lose track of the action. DO NOT rely on your eyes to tell you if there is a hit; in electric fencing, only signals registered by the box are valid hits. “Losing track of the action” only refers to when fencers are in very close contact and you cannot determine priority – if they are six inches apart, you cannot be blamed for wanting to break them apart. For technical problems, please see “How to Fix Quickly Fix Fencing Equipment.”

6. State the reason for the halt immediately.

7. If fencing resumes, place yourself between the fencers and establish appropriate distance. Be generous with fencers about to go off the strip. Resume from step #2.

8. At the end of all pools and direct elimination bouts, having the fencers initial next to their names to validate scores.

Tips & Warnings

• Your job is to exactly recite everything that happened, even when it’s perfectly obvious. Lazy directors let the box direct for them; “one-light” is another way of saying “I don’t know.” And if you don’t know, you shouldn’t be directing.
• There is a 5 second window before your memory converts the past into short-term memory, stripping away unnecessary details. If you can’t make the call in under 5 seconds, you don’t know. Admit it and move on. Again, this is why you should simply recite everything that happened immediately after calling the halt.
• You will make mistakes. Let them go. You owe the fencers your full concentration. Do not award “make-up” touches – that only exacerbates the problem.
• NEVER reverse a call, even when you know you are wrong. You will lose all credibility on the strip if you do so.

Resources

• You can read the USFA rulebook here