You’re facing your opponent, time is running out. You have a higher score, all you have to do is keep going and you’ll win. One last encounter, don’t do anything stupid, play it smart, play it safe.
A rush of speed, a blur of movement, contact. It’s over, you’ve won!... Then, the unthinkable happens: the ref makes a bad call and somehow your point is nulled. Indeed it’s over and despite what you know happened, you’ve lost.
This situation happens in every sport, whether it be team or individual. Judges consult other pairs of eyes, challenge calls, throw red flags, watch replays over and over, but inevitably calls are made, calls stand, regardless of who agrees or disagrees with what happened.
I’ve never thought of myself as a competitive person. I wasn’t much for sports in high school. In college I competed in fencing and we had a winning team, but even then I didn’t take my training as seriously as others. I’ve run 5ks and obstacle course races, but those are less about competing against others, and more about yourself.
I was a competitive fencer, and although fencing is an Olympic sport, I would argue the general public knows little about it. For a little over a year now I’ve been competing in HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts). Indeed, it’s a niche sport; less people know about it than fencing. My first competition in HEMA I won silver in rapier, that was in January 2019. Last weekend (August 2019) I again won silver in rapier, but not without the dreaded controversial call.
The HEMA community is a unique one, with just as much emphasis (if not more) on study of historical fighting manuscripts than actual fighting. The people I’ve met are mostly older working adults, well out of college. Most people at that age are more interested in hobbies, and the ones who practice HEMA want a unique sport and an experience unlike the traditional sports on TV.
And there is a high level of competition. Like any sport, you play to win. But win or lose, after every fight there is still a comradery shared - knowledge that we are the few who practice the sport with the acknowledgement that after the fight there is nothing riding on it and having fun is what’s most important.
Not to say there isn’t a douchebag at every competition, but I encountered more whiny kids and irate parents at fencing competitions, challenging every call and yelling at judges as if the future of their college career depended on it. To my knowledge, there are no HEMA scholarships.
But again, you still fight to win. You bought the ticket, you want the most out of it. Good, bad, or ugly you want the competition to be fair and impartial. You want judges and refs to be competent, you want your opponent to be honorable and honest.
That’s why it still sucks when you get a bad call. Looking back I’m surprised at myself and how personally I took it. It overshadowed the fact that I got silver in my second competition. I couldn’t look past the fact that I beat so many people to get there, that all my hard work and training paid off and I actually had something to show for it. I was gaining a reputation, still am, and the next competition I might be recognized. But I didn’t get 1st, and that’s all I could think about. After all, there is a competitive side to me, to most of us I think. Why compete if you don’t want to win? If I felt the calls were justified, I wouldn’t be upset about getting 2nd, I would’ve been proud I still made it that far. But instead, I felt like something was taken from me. And the bad sport, the sore loser, the part of me I didn’t think existed, puffed up like a red-eyed 12 year-old and it took a few days to get over it.
But you move on. You have to. There’s no point in dwelling, because again, there was nothing riding on it. No scholarships, no payout. Others were excited for me, others were proud. I feel I represented my guild well and in the end it’s the positives that are important. There may have been some bad calls that worked in my favor for all I know, and someone on the receiving end may feel cheated out of their medal. I could whine and complain, but it wouldn’t do any good. My silver medal is in the books, on my wall, in my memory. Bad calls are part of sport, part of life. Judges and refs are only human and we all belong to a sport that is ever evolving and desires to be better. We learn to accept the bad calls, move forward, make sure next time there is no question on a point.
Play it safe, play it fair, and most of all: have fun.
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