Woody Cavenaugh

Walking into a fencing tournament for the first time can be very daunting, especially for spectators. With ball sports you have certain expectations. You sit here, that team all wears the same color and are over there, the other team wears a completely different color and they are opposite the first team. All you really have to do is watch the ball, glance at the scoreboard, and listen to the announcer. Fencing is almost exactly like that, except for the fact that it isn’t. You won’t know for sure where to sit, everyone is wearing white, some are wearing iridescent vest while others are wearing iridescent jackets. There is no announcer, and if there is a scoreboard at all, the whole thing is about eight inches tall by twenty inches wide, and they are scattered all over the place. This document will hopefully explain enough to allow you to follow along without burying you in the history, trivia, and vocabulary that you are probably constantly surrounded by already by knowing a fencer to begin with.

Part One: The Basics
Seating for ball sports is easy, you sit up in the stands to the left and the right of the action looking down on the playing field. The best seats are in the middle, and they cost the most. The good news is that in America, watching a fencing tournament is completely free. The bad news is that you will most likely need to bring your own chair, and figure out for yourself where to sit where you can watch a strip without being in the way. You cannot sit between strips. Strips are typically setup with two close together, with a largish space on either side. The scoring boxes will go in the narrow space and the referees get the big open spaces. You may not walk between the referee and their strip. With the larger space often so small that the referees have to stand back to back to work there is no way to get a “good seat” at most tournaments. To make matters worse, what space is left over will likely be taken up by the fencers themselves, and their long bags, coolers, other bags, and personal chairs (assuming the fencer isn’t laying out flat on the floor between bouts). Apart from that there are no hard and fast rules about finding a place to sit. Fencing tournaments held in basketball gyms have bleachers, however if the bleachers are the kind that can be pushed against the wall, tournament organizers will often do it to increase the space available for fencing strips themselves.

The fencing strip (also known as a piste) is 14 meters long and around 2 meters wide. It is divided with a minimum of four lines. The “en guard” lines are each 2 meters from the center of the strip and fencing starts here at the beginning of each bout and after each point scored. 1.5 meters from the end of each strip is a line defining a box (often with an “X” in it). This is called the warning box. The warning is that you are about to back off the end of the strip. If you see a fencer step off of the end of the strip, it is handled much like a safety in football. The person is penalized by leaving the rear edge of the playing area by a point being awarded to the other. Both feet must leave the end of the strip before they are out of bounds. There is also a penalty for leaving the side of the strip. This penalty is the loss of one meter by the offending fencer. If you step off of the side of the strip in the warning box, you are very likely going to find yourself losing a meter right off of the back of the strip. This is the same penalty as walking off of it on your own power.

Each strip has a scoring box which at the most basic has four large lights and a couple of small lights. The major lights will be red, green, and two clear ones. The minor ones will be yellow. Each side of the box will have a colored light, a clear light, and a little yellow light. At the most fancy, the box will have those lights, plus a score board, a timer, and a few small red lights that keep up with penalties, priority, and other like things that won’t be nearly as important to you as it is to the fencer.
Each strip will also have a referee and if he or she is very lucky a scorekeeper as well. At a low level event the fencers may have to take turns refereeing. At good low level events the referee is wearing street cloths because they aren’t also fencing. At a good event, the referees will be wearing navy blue blazers. The referee determines who is awarded the touch and administers penalties as needed.

The fencers when called to the strip will first hook themselves into the scoring system, this is the long spring loaded cord that connects them to the scoring box. As they move the spring in the reel takes up the slack so they don’t trip over the cord should they suddenly run backwards. The next thing the fencers will do is wait to have their weapon inspected by the referee. If it is their first bout the referee may check to make sure that their equipment has all the proper inspection marks and that they are wearing it. They make sure that there is a clip to keep the body cord plugged into the socket. In epee and foil they check to make sure the weapon’s tip can support the required weight, in epee they make sure that the tip passes a “shim test”. If the weapon fails any of these various test, it is confiscated for the duration of the bout, and the fencer has to get their backup weapon. The USFA rule book requires that each fencer bring to strip two body cords, and two weapons. In practicality, you will see fencers bring several body cords and as many weapons as they can afford/carry.

In a tournament only two fencers can fence on a strip at one time, so event organizers have as many strips set up as they have room for. In a small space this may be only three strips. They might only have one event going on at once and if they have a good turn out there may be upwards of 40 fencers all waiting to fence. That is a lot of people milling around in a small space with three scoring boxes beeping and lighting up all at once. At Division II/III summer nationals in Miami in 2007, there were 96 strips and 4500 fencers. If only two fencer can fence on a strip at any given time and there are 96 strips than there are only 192 fencers fencing at any given time. For this reason Summer Nationals is a ten day event. The noise of 96 beeping boxes, the flashing of cameras, 96 boxes, and the milling around of that many people make large events almost overwhelming for the most seasoned veterans. For this reason and several others a system of hand signals is used by the referees to make calls and award points.

Most tournaments follow a similar format with one set of “pools” followed by direct elimination. Other sports have pools too, but they have another name for it. They call it “a season”, and it usually takes months. As fencers sign up they declare their rankings which determine an estimate of their skill level. Most fencers are unrated. The next highest rating is “E”, then “D”, then “C”, then “B” and finally “A”. Event organizers will look at the number of fencers they have, the number of available strips they have and create a number of pools where the size and strength of skill level are roughly equal. Each fencer has to fence every other fencer in their pool in five touch bouts (or three minutes which ever comes first). Once finished, the organizers will count up for each fencer, how many wins, how many losses, how many touches scored, how many touches received and finally indicator. The indicator is the number of touches scored, minus the number of touches received. This number could be positive or negative, positive being better. Once done with this for each pool they will go to each pool and compare the fencers with the most wins. The person with the most wins is first, when there are pools where the winner in each had the same number of wins, they look next to indicators. The fencer with the most wins and the highest indicator is in first place. They then go down the list, first by wins, and second by indicators until everyone has a place from first to last. Sometimes two fencers will have the same number of wins, same indicator, same number of touches scored, and finally same number of touches received. When this happens, there is nothing else to do but make them tied. That place will have a “T” beside it to show that it is tied, and they will skip the next lowest place number. For instance. 1st, 2nd, 3rdT, 3rdT, 5th etc.

Once this grand total of the results is figured out, they can then place the fencers on a direct elimination tableau just like you see in all of the other sports out there. The tableau comes in different sizes to fit your needs. Organizers use the tableau that holds everyone. If there are 8 a tableau of 8 is used. If there are 9, a tableau of 12 has to be used. Everyone has their place on the tableau, and the first place will fence against the last place on the tableau. In the example of 8, the number 1 fencer would fence the number 8 fencer. If there are nine fencers they have to use the 12 tableau, so the first three places get a “bye” and don’t have to fence the first round at all. The reward of placing high is fencing easy bouts. The penalty for placing low is having to fence someone much better than you. The bouts to watch in the first rounds are those in the middle because the fencers there are evenly matched and thus the fencing is exciting to watch and there is no clear winner going in. All direct elimination bouts are to 15 touches. The format is three - three minute periods of fencing, with a one minute break between each. If the bout is going very quickly and one fencer reaches 8 before the end of the first period, the referee will often allow a one minute break. (Usually as an opportunity for the losing fencer’s coach to impart some much needed wisdom.) Note, a single person may approach the fencer to bring them water and a pep talk, but no more than one may come to visit.

Stay tuned for part two in the series "How to Watch Fencing: The Weapons"