Rowing BC Umpire Seminar 2017 Skills Event

Skills Event What are Skills? “basic boat handling skills that … are required in order to race safely and with confidence in sanctioned regattas …”

Skills Event RCA Rules of Racing Only reference (4.5) to Skills Event is that its Non-Standard course may be shorter or longer than the standard course and that it is not necessary that the course be straight.

Skills Event RCA CAN ROW Skills Event handbook Aligned “with the Long Term Athlete Development model” … “during a Learn to Train (novice) program” (LTAD page 15). Renamed and updated as RCA Athlete Development Pathway. “rowers will be better prepared to begin racing with good technical skills as a result of the focus on this developmental priority” “recommended that all novice rowers start rowing in sculling boats … singles and doubles.”

Skills Event Course Map “Ensure the buoys are a different colour than lane markers to eliminate confusion for the athlete.” (SE page 6)

Skills Event Scoring sheets Demerits – Objective binary choice (e.g. “0”, “5”, or “10”, not “7”). Not consistent – Some demerit total maximums are the result of adding components, others the result of picking the largest component.

Skills Event Format 1. Back and Lock (SE pages 9 & 15) 2. Start 3. Emergency Stop 4. Square Blade 5. Spin Turn 6. S Turns (two directions) The first 3 utilize a “real race” script.

Skills Event YouTube SE videos Skill #1 - Back and Lock Skill #2 - Start Skill #3 - Emergency Stop … CAN ROW Skills Events (Full Version) (see Course Map at 2:25 – 2:30) Rowing Canada Skills Event (Barrie ON - 2014)

Skills Event Role controversy “… provides the detailed information for rowers, coaches, umpires (2), evaluators (2) and all regatta personnel to fully understand the set-up, scoring and operation of the Skills Event.” “Umpires … call the Start and E Stop … receives all the scoring sheets and tallies the score”

Skills Event RCA UC guidance “Umpires are not skill judges, nor timers.” 3 Umpires: Control, Skills 1 & 2 script, Skills 3-6 observation. So much for theory; Now, some (local) reality…

Skills Event Previous BC regattas with a Skills Event component BC Championships / Challenge West (2012) BC Summer Games (2012, 2014, 2016) Crabfest Skills & Head of the Hamster (2015, 2016) - Here on the Island, we dealt with 164 High School Novice participants in the SE (and Duelling Eights) portions (and 172 Advanced in the Head Race). Hungerford Cup (2013)

Skills Event Crabfest exceptions Truncated and modified Skills: (1) Back and Lock, (2) Racing Start, (3) Emergency Stop, (4) Square(not S)-Turns, and (5) a 200 m Time Trial. Adding Demerits and Time Trial seconds effectively guaranteed unique composite scores. LOC wanted Umpires as Evaluators due to skill and impartiality. Note that we processed over 40 quads in about 3.5 hours.

Skills Event Crabfest lessons New Evaluators can be paired with experienced ones (for both mentorship and collaboration). Emergency Stop – Crews anticipate and the majority achieve zero demerits, but we certainly don’t want to minimize its importance. Over-all time interval “bottle-neck” was the two Square (90o) Turns. One set of Evaluators did these and the preceding Emergency Stop. A crew can be sent on to the next Skill as soon as that Evaluator is ready. Therefore, “the more, the better”.