Ratings

I've had little to write about recently so I decided to keep my mouth shut for the better part of a week. But this keeps coming up and I can't resist.

Whenever you gather groups of people together who do something, inevitably some well intentioned person decides to organize them. Preferably, this ranking system rewards skill and accomplishment. As is often the case, USFA's first attempt at this did not work.

In the before time, in the long, long ago, we referred to people as senior, junior, & novice fencers. These terms were so ridiculously vague that I will not go into them.

In the dark ages, people who had not fenced in 50 years were given B's & A's, despite a few being deceased. Further, if you got lucky and won your A at a tournament you kept it for life. You had no incentive to improve. You were suddenly king for life. But to make it fair, earning an A, B, or C involved a herculean effort. If memory serves correctly, A's were only awarded to winners of Div1, so the number of A's in the US was hilariously smaller than it is today. B's were only awarded in Div1 if you made it somewhere near the finals. The lowly C was passed out to any shmo who could win a regional tournament.

In the renaissance, USFA saw the advent of the D and E ratings. Upper management noticed that youth fencers were not motivated to continue fencing after two to three years without a rating. All they saw was 3 years of their life fighting tooth and nail against more experienced fencers with no real recognition or rank to show for it. So to appease people who like to see outward recognition for less than godly results, the USFA started handing out D & E ratings. That way, Billy so-and-so can finally see a bright new letter by their name. Furthermore, ratings now decayed at a rate of every 4 years. So your A suddenly felt shrinkage if you slacked off enough that you weren't able to renew it. All in all, this was a smart move by the USFA as it increased the value of ratings by putting a shelf life on them. It also increased the ability to seed accurately as an 'A2002' is worse than an 'A2004.' You're going to have to forgive the dates, I haven't met an A in about that long.

I believe we are currently operating under USFA rating system 2.5. We may be on the verge of going to a numerical system in a year or two, but there are equal signs of going either way.

The Fencing community as a whole is obsessed with ratings. Like any good subculture all of its participants dig on reputation and rank in some form or another. We like to see signs of our progress, which is a good thing in humanity. I am not here to rag on our desire to improve, far from it.

What I am here to rag on, is when people get weird about ratings. They use them as character judgments as opposed to seeding guides. It makes me slightly upset when someone gets all lordly with their rating. I've always seen a high rating in my opponent as a weakness to exploit just like everything else. It pumps my adrenaline like nothing else when I have a chance to lay out an A.

One of the funniest things I ever saw was a 15 year old Hungarian saber fencer fresh of the boat at DivIII. I had him in pools and thought something was a bit off. He ended up knocking me out in the round of 8, which was my first national medal (and to this day, one of my favorites). I was watching him fence for gold when I saw him whip out flying parry-2 followed by parry-8. For those of you that don't know what that means, he was playing with the poor kid. Viciously playing with him. I always wondered what happened to him because I never saw him again in the next 4 years. I hope he comes out of nowhere again, just so I can watch a good show.