The Professional Coach Allen Evans, Dominion Fencing
	There is a coach of my acquaintance who often gave seminars in my area. Often his seminars were for beginning students, and because fencing is what it is, and students are who they are, he often found himself giving the same seminar over and over again. I attended every one of these seminars, first as a student, and then as an assistant coach. I insisted on paying for the seminar - over his protests - whether I was being coached or helping to coach. Finally, in exasperation, he asked me what could I possibly be getting out of a seminar I had seen three or four or five times. I shrugged and said: "Hey, I just like working with a professional". This answer didn't satisfy him. "What do you mean by 'a professional'?" he said. "What makes me a professional?" Like any good teacher, my answer only prompted more difficult questions from him. I sat down a few weeks later and started to think about this idea of a "professional coach". Certainly there are a lot of coaches training fencers in the United States. Some of them are very professional. Some are not. Some of these professionals earn a lot of money coaching. Some of them don't. What is a professional coach? What makes one coach a "professional" and another "un-professional"? My first impressions when I considered these two questions was to quote the Supreme Court Justice Stewart who once famously said about pornography: "I know it when I see it". I instinctively know when I am dealing with a professional coach and when I am not. This answer, of course, is not very quantifiable, and is certainly not very defensible. After some thought, though, there are several areas that a fencing coach shows their mettle. I think about these things when I grade my own ability as a coach. Professional coaches know their craft, and practice it to the best of their ability. To some this means that the coach has to have been a champion to be capable of being a "professional". But this is not true. Many coaches get their start coaching simply because they know more than anyone else in their area, and people look to them for advice and training. For those coaches, they teach to the best of their knowledge. The professional coach, in this situation, understands that they do not know everything about fencing, but they teach what they do know, and use the materials at hand. Mistakes are made in these situations by well meaning coaches, it is true. This does not stop the professional coach from pushing forward.
	A professional coach never stops learning. This is a corollary to the previous point. This applies not only to "new" coaches but also to coaches who have been teaching for many years and who may have had many successful students. I was very impressed by a coach I know, Maitré Ed Richards, who had a late night discussion with me about preparation in foil, and how to teach preparation. He asked me many questions, and on the walk from the restaurant where we had been dining back to the hotel, we even did some impromptu demonstrations in a parking lot. A few months later, Maitré Richards had taken some of the ideas we had talked about and built an entire clinic on them, adding his own concepts to ideas we had talked about that night. Maitré Richards is good example of someone who never stops learning. Unfortunately, the converse is also true. There are those coaches who feel that momentum is validation for everything that they do now. I attended a lecture by a coach who had a long history of teaching in an older, more classical style. At one point in the question and answer, he stood up very straight and retorted to an audience member who had challenged him on a point of teaching with the answer: "I've been teaching fencing for 40 years". My neighbor leaned over and whispered: "Yeah, and for the last thirty years he's been wrong!"
"...the lesson is about the student..."	Professional coaches know that the real reason they teach is TO teach. Who, really, is the lesson about? Ultimately, the lesson is about the student, not the coach. A young coach once told me: "I could give you a lesson you couldn't take." What is this speaking to? How much more impressed I would have been if he had promised me a lesson that would teach me something. After all, isn't that his role as a coach? Instead, this coach has confused proving HIS ability (an ego generated exercise) with improving MY ability (his real job as a coach). Ultimately the professional coach understands that the lesson is about the student, and what the student does or does not know. A professional coach treats colleagues, students, and others with respect. This starts with small things on the part of a coach: like showing up on time. Don't you get mad waiting in the lobby of a doctor's office for that appointment that is always a half an hour later than you scheduled? Certainly a fencing coach should show at least the common courtesy of showing up to practices on time, and ready to work. After all, as coaches, we expect that of the students, don't we? Of course, this behavior extends past the students (who the coach depends on for a living, after all). Is the coach respectful to parents, tournament organizers, referee's, bout committee members, other coaches? A professional coach understands that all of these people have a role to play in their sport. A coach who doesn't treat the fencing community well is likely to be treated poorly BY it.
	Some coaches, however, cannot even muster basic civility. I attended a referee seminar during which several jokes were made about a particular coach who is regularly black carded at National Tournaments for his behavior around referees whom he feels are not making correct calls. What is this coach teaching by example to his students? How would you feel if you were his student, and at a critical moment in a competition, he was back at the hotel because of a black card earlier in the day? Is this coach really doing his job? Is this coach being respectful of the needs of his students? On a personal note, I cannot understand students who persist in working with coaches who are continuously insulting and abusive. To treat students with respect seems to be a statement that hardly needs to be said. Yet, I still see coaches yelling at students, belittling them and striking them with weapons when they don't perform. To say this is un-professional behavior is an under statement. Students should never put up with this behavior, and when subject to it, they should do the smart thing and vote with their feet and find another coach. There are those situations where the student wishes very badly to fence, and lives in a location in which there are few fencing options. But sometimes this is not the case. The fencer has choices of coaches, often good coaches, and insist on training with someone who seems to have no respect for their students. I am always puzzled by this. I have asked these students why they persist in training with someone who treats them so badly. My answer has been either a shrug, or a comment to the effect that the particular coach has trained champions, and they (the student) are willing to put up with the abuse to get this level of coaching. What I do not think the students (or their parents, in the case of younger fencers) see is that often the "champions" the coach has trained are simply those students that have survived the coach. These fencers are by necessity tough and competitive - they have been fighting since their first lessons against the one person who should have been a partner in their success. Sadly, it is often the youngest fencers who suffer at the hands of these coaches. Older fencers, when given a choice, either confront the coach and reach an accommodation, or leave the program. Every year, un-professional behavior on the part of coaches cost the sport of fencing young and promising talent that the sport can ill afford the lose.
"How can a coach lie to a student?"	A professional coach is honest with their students. Once, during the United States National Championships, my (inexperienced) fencer pulled one of the top seeds in her first direct elimination bout. Her opponent had made two (now three) World Championship or Olympic Teams. We talked as she hooked up. I outlined some of the things I thought she should try, what she should look for in the bout, and what she should try to take away from the encounter. At the end I told her quite bluntly that I didn't expect her to win this bout. Later, another coach castigated me for being "defeatist" and not trying to inspire "confidence" in my fencer. I still believe I did the right thing. Had I tried to pump my student up to win a bout against a fencer so superior, it would have been a lie. I knew it would have been a lie, and she knew it would have been a lie. How can a coach lie to a student? A few years later, in a similar situation against a tough fencer, I told the same student that she could beat her opponent. Even though I thought her opponent still had a slight edge, I knew that if she fenced with confidence, that she had a good chance of winning. I decided that this was a bout where my belief in her ability would tip the edge in her favor. The bout was a struggle, but she went on to win the bout. I knew that by being honest with her in the past, she would believe me when I told her that she could win. Professional coaches uphold their commitments. This extends beyond simply showing up for lessons or classes on time. It extends to keeping promises made to students, committing to teach to the best of his or her ability, and giving maximal effort. The professional coach is one who teaches to the room, and not the paycheck. This coach shows as much enthusiasm and gives as much effort to a class of five as he or she would to a class of twenty five. This coach may not undertake every project offered, but follows through on every project accepted. Good coaches transcend their credentials. I have met coaches with very prestigious diplomas who have left a very bad impression with me. On the other hand, I have met some very excellent coaches that I later found had no official diploma - or training - in coaching at all. Being a professional fencing coach is more than just a diploma, just like being a good doctor is more than a medical degree. I can't help but think that a coach that fosters the qualities I have mentioned here, and carries these qualities out to their programs at their club, has more than earned the right to teach, diploma or not.

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