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 NonStandard 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”.