Our guest is Matt Tucker, a referee and soon-to-be veteran fencer from Boston who specializes in saber and foil but referees all three weapons.
In this episode of First to 15, we're joined by Matt Tucker, a referee and soon-to-be veteran fencer from Boston who specializes in saber and foil but referees all three weapons.
Matt started refereeing nationally in 2016 and moved up the refereeing ranks quickly. He’s now an early career FIE ref.
On top of all that, he’s a Data Scientist for Amazon's Alexa organization and married to a fellow national-level fencing referee, Bern Samko. We’re excited to chat with Matt Tucker today about his fencing journey, his ascent as a national and then international referee and his thoughts about the role technology might play in our sport in the future.
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First to 15: The Official Podcast of USA Fencing
Host: Bryan Wendell
Cover art: Manna Creations
Theme music: Brian Sanyshyn
EPISODE 32
[INTRO]
[00:00:01] BW: Hello, and welcome to First to 15, the official podcast of USA Fencing. I'm your host, Bryan Wendell, and in this show, you're going to hear from some of the most inspiring, interesting, and insanely talented people in the sport we all love. First to 15 is for anyone in the fencing community and even for those just checking out fencing to see what it's all about. Whether you're an Olympian or a Paralympian, a newcomer, a seasoned veteran, a fencing parent, a fan, or anyone else in this wonderful community, this podcast is for you. With that, let's get to today's episode. Enjoy.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:40] BW: Today we're recording live from the 2023 Summer Nationals in Phoenix, and we've got our special guest who's just done with a day of refereeing here, Matt Tucker, who's a referee and soon to be veteran fencer from Boston, who specializes in sabre and foil, but actually referees all three weapons. Matt started referring nationally in 2016 and has moved up the refereeing ranks quickly. He's now also an early career FIE ref. On top of all that, he's a data scientist for Amazon's Alexa organization, and married to a fellow national level fencing referee, Bern Samko.
We're excited to chat with Matt today about his fencing journey, his ascent as a national and an international referee, and also his thoughts about the role technology might play in our sport in the future. Hello, Matt. Welcome to the podcast.
[0:01:26] MT: Yes, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be on.
[0:01:29] BW: Yes. Let's start with how you got your start in fencing, which was back in 2014, you were living in the UAE, United Arab Emirates, and working, and you had your PhD in linguistics at that point. Can you share that story and how you got fencing on your radar?
[0:01:45] MT: I think like a lot of folks, it took some measure of luck and good timing. I knew about fencing, and I had tried it as a kid. But I grew up outside of Madison, Wisconsin, in a suburb, there weren't a lot of clubs, and it was a long drive that wasn't really sustainable for my parents or I. So I sort of put it aside and played other sports, wrestled, ran track. But then I went to graduate school, and the last part of a PhD is that you sit down, and write a book-length piece of research, where you're spending long hours in the library or the lab. Needless to say, I come out of that experience more overweight than I wanted to be, less fit than I wanted it to be.
I took a postdoctoral job, NYU in Abu Dhabi. New York University has a campus in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. I took a job there, but my wife hadn't finished her degree yet. She was in California, and I was alone, literally halfway around the world not feeling good about my physical fitness. So I said, "Okay, it's time to get active again, I need to pick up a sport." Also, it's a little hotter there than it is here in Phoenix now.
[0:02:40] BW: Hard to imagine.
[0:02:41] MT: Yes. The temperatures can be between 40 and 50 Celsius, like 100- and 120-degrees Fahrenheit, so it was definitely going to be an indoor sport. I was walking on campus one day and saw a flyer for the student club team, and contacted them, and just sort of said, "I've always wanted to fence. Would you mind if I dropped by?" I got a call from the athletic director who said, "We can't have you there because you're not a student, you're like staff, but we need a faculty advisor. Would you mind just being the adult of record for this club team?"
[0:03:08] BW: No fencing experience required.
[0:03:09] MT: None, just CPR training, which they gave me, and then off we went. The club team had contracted with a private club in the Emirates, actually out of Dubai, to come in and bring coaches. The club had a bunch of very high energy coaches come in and teach lessons. After a couple of months, like the bug had gotten a hold of me, and so I started driving 90 minutes one way after work from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, and taking lessons, and fencing at this club called MKFA in Dubai. Where I met a young Egyptian guy, whose name was Yasse Eldarawani, who was a 2004 Olympian for Egypt. But I think American listeners might know him better as the coach of the [inaudible 0:03:44]Sisters, because he's since moved to the US, and has worked with them.
The coaches of that club and Yasser were so welcoming, and they taught me a lot about high level epee. It was a club mostly run by former pentathletes, so it only had epee. I would work with Yasser and these coaches, but I knew sabre existed, and I knew probably in my heart, I did not have the spirit that was patient enough to be an epee fencer, a successful one anyway. One of the local competitions in Emirates, I ran into a guy who was refereeing, who was a former member of the Dutch National Fencing Team when he was younger, and he competed against Ivan Lee and[inaudible 0:04:17] Smart when he was younger. We got to talking and he just said, "I can train you, come to my villa."
We would do these three-to-four-hour lessons in an unairconditioned squash court in his villa, running up and down. He taught me most of what I learned about saber then. That collection of high-level people that I happen to run into in the UAE taught me like, what's great about the sport. I give them all those folks credit, because I was awful. I was a brand-new beginner, I was 29 years old, really overweight, trying to lose the weight, not fit. Not one of those people ever made me feel like I was unwelcome. After that experience, obviously, I was sort of set for life and I kept fencing, driving an hour and a half, one way three or four nights a week to take these lessons until I left that job in 2016 to come back to the US.
[0:05:05] BW: Yes. We talked a lot about all the great benefits that someone gets from fencing. Obviously, fencers themselves know how physical it is. But maybe outside of the sport, I don't feel like people say, "Fencing, that's going to be a great workout." That seems like a message that we could do a better job of getting out there.
[0:05:24] MT: Yes, I agree. I didn't maybe share that so, so much, but it's also, because I would do sprints when I ran track. So I sort of knew that high-intensity interval stuff is no joke. Even though it doesn't look like it's that hard from the side, it's actually really difficult and it makes you really fit. But yes, I lost something like 20 pounds since the beginning of starting fencing. Obviously, I can like much more fit nowadays. So it was a really positive experience for me, and I do often find myself telling my non-fencing friends. If you think that that doesn't look like it's difficult physically, you should probably try it once and see how it feel afterwards.
[0:05:55] BW: Right, then give me a call. Yes. After you started fencing, a couple years later, you tried the refereeing side of it, right? You were living in Michigan at the time working as a professor, and what was the catalyst there?
[0:06:09] MT: To be honest, a good hard look in the mirror. I was fencing and I was older than most Div 1s sort of senior, whatever, fencers, not winning very much and would occasionally get into conversations with referees while I was competing, and then look back on those conversations, and think, I could be right, I could be wrong, but I don't really want to comport myself that way at tournaments, especially as a full-grown adult. I was the kind of person – the sort of parents that instilled in me the idea of like, if you really feel like a job isn't being done the way you want it to be done, do it yourself. So I started to volunteer, and it just so happened one day, I was at a club in Michigan. I asked the owner of the club, do you know anyone who could help me get into refereeing in United States and learn how to referee better. I dabbled in the UAE, but I didn't really know what I was doing.
It turned out that the owner of that club, I didn't know this when I asked them, was the sister of one of the Referee's Commission members, Patrick Webster. As she finished explaining to me, "Yes, I do know someone who can help you." Patrick wheeled around the corner and said, "Did someone just asked about how to be a referee." Patrick, to his credit, gave me a lot of help plugging me into local events, and getting me a ton of experience. But the catalyst was really thinking like, I go to these tournaments, I find myself frustrated, I watched the video, and I think, "Boy, that referee was correct. I'm sort of being a jerk here." I thought, this isn't really how I want to spend my time in the competition home, because I'd rather bring some help or some positivity. So I started doing it, and then – because again, luck and timing ran into the right people who sort of fostered that interest. It became something I was doing more often than fencing before I sort of realized what was going on.
Then, as I started to get like better at it, it became fun because people would ask for me to come to tournaments, and I get to do matches that I would never qualify to fence in myself. At the end of the day, once I started doing matches with division one athletes, and things like – it's the best seat in the house. You sit right there, and watch Olympians do these things that are just unbelievable from a physical perspective. That bit me as hard as the fencing itself. I thought I don't want to have to go sit back in the third row again, so I am already doing this.
[0:08:10] BW: I never thought of it like that. You know you've made it as a referee when you've made it deeper into the tournament than you would have as a fencer. That's an interesting way to think of it.
[0:08:18] MT: Yes. I try not too much to think about it that way. Because frankly, my approach to all this is that, I don't really matter that much. I should get the calls right, and I have a job to do. But the people that matter are the ones that are fencing. I'm just the guy flapping his arms around and maybe mumbling in French sometimes. But like, at a certain point, I realized like it's really fun to do the matches that are the ones you would watch if you were going to put the live stream on toward the end of the event. I would be lying if I said most referees don't think about that at some point.
Once I realized that, not just that I was going to get to watch these matches from the best seat in the house, but that both fencers trusted me to be the one sort of refereeing the match became something it was kind of hard to stop doing at that point.
[0:08:55] BW: That's interesting, because that implies that you're able to still just find enjoyment in watching this beautiful sport, even when you're in referee mode. You're able to kind of balance that dynamic where you're like – because you can't get too wrapped up in the moment and say, "Oh, man. Oh, wait. I forgot to actually be a ref right now."
[0:09:14] MT: I have done that before. I think I still find myself mostly, especially when you come to division one events at NACs, just in awe, because I started later and I absolutely cannot do those things myself physically. I watch these athletes and I just think this is unreal. I've always sort of told myself if that feeling ever goes away, that's probably the time to scale back or hang it up a little bit. I remember this one time that parent brought me a video of me referring about where a young child, I think in a Y10 event, made an absolutely beautiful counter riposte. It's like a very complicated blade action and the kid just, you know, did it exactly correctly. The reason the parent was showing me the video is that, instead of making a call, I turned in the video right to the parent and go, "Wow" and then I turned around and phrase the action. The two 10-year-olds just kind of looked at me like, "This adult is a little bit not here right now." There have been moments like that. You're right that we have to be focused, but I hope at least, all my colleagues agree that it's just really fun to watch these amazing athletes do some of these amazing things.
[0:10:10] BW: You're right. Once it stops being fun, then maybe it's time to try something else, right? I think that's a great perspective. One thing that interests me about your story is that most of the referees I've talked to, a lot of them do two weapons, some just do one, but you've referee nationally and all three. How do you keep your game strong in three very different weapons?
[0:10:32] MT: I started in sabre as a referee, and I think there are a lot of foil fencers, and probably even more epee fencers that would be able to tell you that they can feel the difference in my ability. The big thing I think I would say is that, it's probably – I don't think it's really possible to be super, super high level in all three at the same time, because it does really take a lot of work to understand a single weapon, just like when you're fencing it. The reason I do it is because I just really like fencing, and I like all three weapons. Again, they're amazing athletes and all three weapons.
As far as how to do it, I don't know that there's much of a shortcut besides many, many hours refereeing, talking about refereeing, talking to fencers and coaches about their perspective on refereeing on actions, on calls. Then, I think I consider myself really fortunate. I sort of came to fencing in an era where there it just feels like there's boundless numbers of YouTube videos. I know talking to some of the folks that are around in earlier periods in fencing that that was really rare to find videos of high-level matches where you could clearly see everything. I also do spend a lot of time watching videos. I'll watch the final strip presentation of most of the FIE events throughout the year. Maybe not right away, but when I get some free time. And the stuff that goes on at NACs, if I'm not there, I'll try to watch some of the live streams.
I think the short answer is, I just spend a lot of time around it. I'm very fortunate that I have a job and a partner who support that. I think that's the real answer, is that you have to kind of be around it. I've gotten the most help, I think from athletes, and coaches over the years, especially in places where it's not safer, and I don't feel as comfortable. If I'm trying to figure out something about foil, I find that, obviously, I'll talk to the foil referees, but it can also be really useful to talk to a fencer in a moment, maybe not in a hot bout when things are really on the edge. But just to say like, you know, I think I want to phrase this action this way, is that your understanding of like what's happening here. Then you just learn so much when you talk to folks about why they're doing what they're doing on the piece, what they're trying to set up, what they're trying to force the match to become. That can help a lot, learn the nuances of things that I can't do myself, especially in the other two weapons.
[0:12:31] BW: In the intro, we described you as an early career FEI referee. Just to dive into that. In 2019, you got your FIE B sabre, and then in 2022, FIE B in foil. The FIE B, that might not mean a lot to a listener who's maybe newer to the sport. Let's start by explaining the process to becoming an FIE level, international level referee, the exam, everything that goes into it.
[0:12:58] MT: Yes, it's quite a process. I am still making my way through it. I think here inside the United States, it usually starts at the end of every season, the Referee's Commission will get together. Among other things, identify some of the referees who have done a really good job in say, division one, in juniors, who are capable of handling high pressure bouts without a lot of supervision, whose accuracy rate on calls is really high. Then what we do is, when the cadet team goes to the European Fencing Commission cadet circuit events, which happened in the fall and early winter of each season. We'll send some of the sort of training to become FIE referees along with the team.
[0:13:35] BW: Because we're required to send a certain number.
[0:13:37] MT: Yes, it's proportional to the number of fencers. We're very lucky in United States that we bring a veritable army of fencers to most of these events, so we need –
[0:13:44] BW: Yes, like 20 per event, right?
[0:13:45] MT: Yes, I think I was at one event in Budapest where the entire delegation was over 100 people, parents, fencers, referees, coaches, and Hungarians organizing the tournament. We're just sort of looking around like, where did all these Americans come from. We send in quite a few people, and you go overseas with usually one senior referee, and then a whole bunch of folks that are training, and you work at a European international competition with the team. The level is really high. You could do experience fencing outside the United States, and you get to see how other countries approach refereeing and what the standards of professionalism are, all that stuff.
Then what happens after that, it becomes a little bit luck and timing at that point. Once a year, except in Olympic years, the FIA referees commission which is called arbitrage, which is French for refereeing, they organize an exam in each of the FEI zones. There's four in the world, and ours is North and South America together. Each country can send one person per weapon to take this exam. Then there's an initiative now to bring more gender parity to refereeing. There's a clause now where if you send a female candidate, you can send like one more person, but it's a very small list. The referees commission senior folks that have done a lot of FEI work, get together a few months before that exam, and figure out who do we think is the most poised to do well in the next few years at the FEI level, and send them to the exam. I'll just say that I was probably less stressed during the defense of my dissertation in graduate school.
[0:15:03] BW: I was wondering that. You must have taken a lot of tests and exams in your day, right?
[0:15:06] MT: Yes. But I had studied for decades with those things. Whereas, I was standing in a room with four very, very senior multiple Olympic referees, and being asked these questions, and being asked to call actions on videos, and that was terrifying. I was really fortunate to pass the first time, but it's a very sort of comprehensive exam of your knowledge of the rules. They will ask you to look at some videos, and call those videos as if you were the referee at the World Cup. They have questions you have to sort of talk through why you called it the way that you did.
[0:15:36] BW: The calls I imagine are really those like almost 50-50 points.
[0:15:39] MT: Oh, yes. Two lamps are on the machine every time. On foil and saber, you're never going to get an easy one light action. There's often a lot of cards that need to be given on some of these, because they want to make sure you have a comprehensive understanding of the rules. So they often select videos that are edge cases or infrequent events, because they want to see that you are comfortable enough to immediately do the correct thing, even in the face of something that's not so frequent. To give an example, I remember distinctly seeing a couple of a certain penalty in foil called core, core to avoid at touch, which is where somebody has maybe been parried. And then they sort of continue forward and run into their opponent preventing them from making a riposte.
[0:16:15] BW: Intentionally do it.
[0:16:16] MT: Not always, but either way, you're not allowed to do it. It's unfair to your opponent, right? That's a card that is given. I see that penalty occasionally, but it's definitely nowhere near as common as normal foil actions, or more common penalties that you see. I definitely remember seeing a couple of those, because they were checking to make sure that I understood that this might happen once a season. But when it happens, I have to immediately apply the correct penalty, or I've done something wrong.
[0:16:39] BW: Interesting.
[0:16:39] MT: Then at the end of all, that if you've done well enough on these written and video exams, they'll have you referee some live fencing in front of them. And they'll walk over and ask you questions, and they really do sort of check to make sure that you are properly knowledgeable about what you're doing. It's usually a two-day event, at least in its current format. At the end of it, they will award folks that pass what they called a B license. I'm not sure I know the history of why it's called a B license, I just know that there's A license, which is a higher level, which is usually held by folks that have done Olympic finals, or many, many years at the Olympic Games. There are very, very few of those people. The most normal license is the FIE B. That's what that test gives people when they pass.
[0:17:19] BW: How do they give you your results? Because I imagine, you're sitting there, palms sweaty maybe, you're just waiting for the result. How do they actually convey to you that you passed?
[0:17:31] MT: It varies year by year, because they work with a local country that's organizing the exam to get things like facilities. So it totally depends on what's available. But it's usually either, they just read off names in a room, or they post the names on the door. There are many portions of the exam where you go one at a time. They go alphabetical by country, but we are in a zone where predominantly the language is Spanish that's spoken. Often, we are Estados Unidos. We go very early in the list, the Americans.
I remember in Costa Rica last summer, sitting for almost two hours after – the part of the exam I was really worried about, just watching one person after another go in, unable to do anything except text referees back in the United States and try not to cry. Then they just came out started reading names of people who had passed. Fortunately, I was on there. When I say I was more stressed than my dissertation, that's where I remember feeling it.
[0:18:19] BW: Oh, for sure. Yes. Oh, my gosh. We've talked on this podcast about like some of the rituals, venters go through, the way they pack their bag, or they only eat a certain breakfast in the morning they're going to fence. Do you have anything like that for getting ready for a tournament or even an individual day within a tournament?
[0:18:38] MT: I assume by asking this, you mean, aside from praying to any deity that will listen that I won't screw up, and ruin a fencers day.
[0:18:43] BW: That's part of it.
[0:18:44] MT: That is part of it. At least for me, one of my major challenges is to not get nervous that I'm going to make mistakes and take something away from these fencers that have worked really hard. On to a point where it's still legitimate thing I work on to get better at. Aside from that, I don't have so many superstitious rituals, but I do a lot of things because, especially, you know, at the North American cups in United States, the size of them is so large, and the hours are so long that if you don't have a fairly clear checklist of things that you do, you'll forget stuff at the hotel or miss things. I do tend to have like a fairly regimented set of things I do in the morning, like get up, and make one of those really terrible instant coffees that they put in the hotel room, and then sit sort of reading the news, and waking up. Then go take a shower, and shave, and be methodical about putting all this stuff together, and then come to the venue.
I usually try to give myself a chunk of like 15 or 20 minutes if I can before the event starts to just go socialize with referees that I haven't seen in a while or do anything except worry about what's to come. But then, at least at the US events once the big time like events get going, there isn't really a lot of time to do anything else. Most of my prematch rituals are doing things I have to do as a referee, like making sure that the strip looks okay, the fencer's equipment is in order, that they have all the inspection marks they I need to have. If I'm on a video round, do I know where my video referee is, do I have a camera operator, that sort of stuff. That keeps me – I wouldn't call it a ritual, it's just a bunch of things that we sort of have to do before events.
At bigger events where there's a longer break, I will just go off somewhere, and try to sit, and do. I guess, you would call it like mindful breathing, or whatever, to sort of remind myself that like, if they're going to give me a big match, they did it for a reason. Then, getting really nervous really doesn't serve anybody any good purpose. That has become a really important thing the further I've gone because they'll give more and more stressful matches. I have to work even harder to not get nervous and not do right by the fencers, first of all.
[0:20:36] BW: Yes, sure. A lot of that is the confidence that you're able to convey out there. I imagine that's something that you work on as well, right? Because I remember back, obviously, it's nowhere near the same level. But when I was in college, I was a softball umpire. I remember they're like, "You got to really sell those calls." Is there any of that that comes into play in fencing refereeing? It's like, if you're making the call, make sure that you're, you know, conveying confidence when you do so even if maybe, deep down, you're like 90% sure of that call.
[0:21:09] MT: I think if you have listeners who are my referee colleagues, they're probably crying from laughter at this point. Because they realize, I am often trying to make sure folks don't realize how nervous I am to get things right for the answers. I think you're absolutely right, that this is definitely something that kind of matters. But I usually tell folks that I'm chatting with, it's important to be confident, and to do your job with confidence, but never use confidence to make up for a lack of understanding, or a bad call, or something that you're confused about, or worried about. I think those moments, fencers' coaches can tell, and that's not the right thing to do for them. But I will say folks, especially if I'm working with a younger referee who's nervous but doing everything right something like, "You do deserve to be here. The only thing you're going to do by doubting yourself is up the probability that you make a mistake, which I assume what you're worried about doing."
Even if it's not for the fencers who need your confidence, so they can trust that you are making the right calls. Maybe for yourself, you want to not be so miserable while you're doing this, and lower the probability that you're going to make a mistake, for sure.
[0:22:06] BW: Let's talk about how parents and coaches interact with referee. We're recording this on day one of Summer Nationals. I haven't seen any of what I sometimes see at these tournaments, which is parents talking to referees in a critical way, coaches even yelling at referees. In your mind, should there be any communication between the coach and the referee? If so, at what point might it cross the line?
[0:22:30] MT: Yes, I think this one is useful maybe to separate my personal beliefs from what the rules require, because they're not always the same. They're not in contradiction. But the rules are fairly clear that when fencing is going on, no one should really be talking to the referee. I think most referees allow coaches and fencers to ask respectful, brief questions if they're confused about something that's going on. But in general, we're trying to get the bout moving, especially later rounds where we're on a finals piece, there's a bit of a production value element to it. Nobody really wants to watch a 10-minute conversation between a guy who doesn't have a microphone on with a suit down in the darkness, and the Olympic athlete that you paid money to see, for instance.
In that context, it's important that we sort of keep things moving, keep it fair for both fencers, not have one-sided conversations only with one of the fencers and their coaches, that sort of thing. It's all in the service of keeping the sport moving. I think in baseball, they use the term pace of play sometimes. I think about it that way. It's like it's not that I don't want to chat with people, or explain the call that I made. It's that we sort of got to keep things moving, or this week, there'll be more than 10,000 direct elimination matches. We really don't have time for a long chat, unfortunately.
My personal take on what should have is the golden rule sort of ideas, like if you're not being a jerk, and you mean well by what you're saying, I'll have a conversation with folks. I think that like sport is cool, because people get really passionate about it. Amotions are absolutely a part of every sport. I have a lot of patience if somebody sentence to me is maybe turned up to 11, when I would prefer a seven or an eight. Because I get it, dude, you are competing, maybe you disagree with a call that I made, or you're upset about something that happened. I feel like that's all very normal. I usually will take a minute and allow that. But I don't love it when folks speak in ways they wouldn't outside to somebody on the street. Because it's like, we're all human, and people are trying to do their best.
That's kind of where I keep it, as like as long as you're willing to have that initial frustrated moment with me. But then, hear me when I say, "Hey, I hear you, let's go over here and talk, but we can't yell anymore." Then I'll sit for as long as folks need to, but after the match when it's appropriate moments to talk to people. To do otherwise is like not honest with the fencers, and coaches, and parents. Because I think everybody has emotions in the venue, including me, and other referees when they're refereeing. If everyone just kind of remembers everyone's human, no one really wants to be screamed at, but emotions are a normal part of sport, I think that kind of leads to a place where folks can have a couple of minutes being frustrated, and then go have a normal conversation somewhere else, or by the side of the piece, then that works pretty well.
[0:24:49] BW: Back to a baseball reference. When the game's over, the umpires are going to run off the field and be gone. At a fencing tournament, the referees are still there. It occurs to me that the longer you're a referee, the more of those personal relationships and even some friendships you're going to make with some of the fencers. Then that person is on the piste in front of you. How do you ensure fairness when maybe your buddies out there on the strip or someone that you've grown close to as a friend?
[0:25:20] MT: Well, I don't know how many listeners would know this. But we actually do tell referees if it's a friend or something. You don't have to fence at the same club with somebody to have a conflict of interest. Okay, for serious situations where it's a buddy of mine, or the coach is a really good friend of mine, I might just say, "I'm not the right referee for this bout."
[0:25:37] BW: Okay. You can say that?
[0:25:37] MT: Yes. Even if I think I can do it fairly, there's also the appearance thing. If folks know, I'm really close with somebody, I don't need them to see me referring about then wonder. Even though I might think I could do a fair job. That's definitely part of it. For the rest of it, though, for me personally, what works to kind of keep this really important in my mind is that if you do that, it's not fair to the other fencer around the strip. That's also one of the ways I've managed to work on self-confidence over the years is, I might worry that I'm screwing up, or be scared. But both fencers need me to be confident enough to do the job well, or it's not fair to them. The same thing is true about trying to keep maintain these relationships. It does lead to some funny moments, though, like where you'll have a fencer upset about a call, and the coach is someone I talked to regularly, and they turn to look at the coach like, didn't you hate that call, and the coach and I are talking, and smiling while the coach is telling the fencer, "No, no, it's not your point. He's right."
Those can be useful, because they're nice teaching moments that happens a lot in the youth events. Beyond that, I think we try to keep it on an even playing field for both people, because both fencers deserve a fair shake in a bout that they've worked that hard to get to.
[0:26:36] BW: Yes, totally. Switching gears a bit, we talked in the intro about your job as a data scientist for Amazon's Alexa organization. And I know you do some work with AI, artificial intelligence. What are your thoughts on technology and refereeing? We've used baseball references on the show. Let's use another one. A lot of people are saying, "Hey, why don't we just use a robot to call balls and strikes?" Do you think there might be a robot Matt Tucker, standing in your place someday and you're back at home?
[0:27:07] MT: I think it'd be great for the fencers because the robot would surely be better looking. But you know, the technology is actually getting there. If you'd asked me this question five years ago, I would have said, like maybe scientifically, that's a stretch goal, that's going to be a hard ask. My personal opinion is the folks who design these sorts of systems, I'm definitely not one of those people. Even though I work around AI. If they could design something that coaches and athletes and everyone sort of thought made the product better, I'd be the first person to hang up the dress shoes and say, "That's enough for me."
I think the biggest thing now is that these big AI models that you might hear about like ChatGPT and other models, they require mountains of data, like it's hard to really state how much data they require when they're trained.
[0:27:43] BW: Yes. Like the whole internet is – pretty much, exactly. I think we're starting to get to a place where there probably is enough fencing videos out there. But it's not marked up in the correct way. Like if you watch a video on the internet, you have to kind of listen for the French and kind of figure out what the referee said. We would need all that stuff annotated. No, of course, that could be done, right. But I think it would take some time, and it would push that goal out like a few years.
The other thing I think about sometimes is – and this came up in the baseball robo discussion, I know from reading the news. Is folks like the match to keep moving. I think the kind of AI, the technology that were required to do to parse a video, figure out where the fencer is, figure out where the blade is, figure out what their tactical intent was, and then make the correct referee decision. That would be a pretty powerful model that is not likely, at least now, to run very fast, except on very, very expensive computers. I'm at least grateful that US Fencing spends that money on say, the national team as opposed to GPUs to run giant processors.
[0:28:41] BW: Can you imagine, it's just like calculating and then you see the bar going across, and both fencers are sitting there waiting, like, "Is it going to be my touch?"
[0:28:48] MT: Exactly.
[0:28:49] BW: Nobody wants that.
[0:28:50] MT: Then, I do think the last pieces of it is like, fencing is a little bit different than baseball in the strike zone, and that some of it is a little bit subjective by design. I often tell my non-fencing friends if they asked me what it's like to referee, I say, "It's like being the home plate umpire in baseball, except nobody really agrees where the strike zone is." I think that there are these moments in fencing, at least now, where it's not clear to me how we would get a computer to do something fairly, because computers tend to do like one or zero, or yes or no. That can be difficult in weird moments in fencing, where what you need is a sort of human knowledge of what the sport is supposed to be about. I think that's true for a lot of sports. I don't really know how we would solve that. I think it's solvable. But at least, the way I understand this technology now, you could end up in some of those weird situations where you hear about the computer learning the wrong rule to do the right thing.
I was trying to think of an example of how this would work in fencing, and the best I could come up with is. If a computer notices that, say, Ivan Lee always wears blue shoes. The computer kind of learns like the guy with the blue shoes is probably his touch. That's obviously not correct. But if Ivan is beating someone 15-0, then that is correct.
[0:29:52] BW: It's part of the training that it's thinking from.
[0:29:53] MT: Exactly. Those things can be hard to suss out, because it looks right at first, and it takes a very low probability sort of edge situation. Somebody just suddenly realized like, the computer is doing something nonsensical. I think we would have to do a lot of work to iron that out, because I think it's true that coaches, and fencers, and parents, and referees now wouldn't necessarily want that to become a part of the sport, for sure.
[0:30:14] BW: Yes, I think that's well said. Another gear switch here. Let's talk about your wife, Bern Samko, who we said is also a national referee. Not all married couples get to work together and get to share passion in that way. How did that happen, and like kind of traveling and working alongside your partner?
[0:30:34] MT: Yes, I forgot to tell you, she works at Amazon too, actually, in Alexa.
[0:30:36] BW: Okay.
[0:30:37] MT: So we met in graduate school doing our linguistics PhD. We obviously met in a place where there's a shared interest about studying language. That worked out nicely for us. We have been work colleagues before outside of this. It's been fantastic. I mean, when I started out, Bern was fencing, and come to stuff, and occasionally do bout committee work, but wasn't really that interested in refereeing. Although her father had been a basketball referee for Holy Cross College for many, many years. It ran in the family.
Then at some point, she just sort of asked me like, "Do you think they would let me referee? I think I might want to do that." We started sort of doing it together. And now, it's great, because I used to feel like I was traveling and leaving her back in Boston or Detroit a lot. Or I couldn't really explain this thing that I was doing that was so important to me in quite the same way to her. Now, it's great, I never have to tell the national office who my roommate needs to be. I always have a dinner buddy after the event ends.
It's been great too, because it means that we watch fencing at home. There's someone to talk to who I can talk to like another referee, and ask like, "Would you have made the same call here or did that seem right to you?" We sort of learned together over these things. That being said, she's the epee specialist in the house, and I rely on her fully for that sort of stuff, which has been another helpful thing. I do epee the least, and so it's really great to have access to somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about the way that weapons should be refereed. I think it's really important that you referee each weapon the way the fencers in that weapon expect. As somebody who hasn't done epee since I was living in the UAE, it's important to me to have that frame of reference. Her and her referee colleague friends have been really helpful to me over the years.
[0:32:10] BW: That's awesome. Finally, any advice for referees just starting out that say that, "As nerve-racking as it sounds, that FIE B license sounds pretty good for me someday." What's your advice?
[0:32:24] MT: I think if you're serious about refereeing, you just have to do it a lot, every level. So if you're just starting out, I think one of the things I always tell folks is when you're done fencing, hang out for another half an hour, and just do nothing but referee bouts. Most clubs, you kind of ref while you're fencing in between matches, but take some time and make a dedicated practice. Talk to the fencers, talk to your coach, talk to other coaches in the club, get them to kind of watch you, don't look to somebody before you make a call, just make it. Then if there's a concern, it's practice, you can always talk it out, that sort of thing.
Ref locally as much as you can. Referee it, ROCs, and RYCs, SYCs. You just have to do it a bunch. I think about it a lot like learning a foreign language, where you can kind of look and people will say, "You can do lots of things to take some practice at home." But really, the only way to do it well is to do immersion to go somewhere where you're using the language all day every day." I think about that the same way. I've always thought it was cute, that they call it a fencing phrase, because then, I can think about the same way I think about language. Where you just have to have a lot of practice, but also like structured practice with the right kind of input.
The other thing I would tell folks is, as you're refereeing, find those people, coaches, athletes, other referees who say things that make sense to you when they explain them. Because they think teaching is hearing the same thing six or seven times, and finally, it sort of clicks one way. Find those people and hold on to them, because they're really valuable. Talk to them about bouts that you've done, show them clips, ask their opinion on things. I tell a lot of referees, the coaches and athletes are a lot more valuable than I think most new referees realize. I think just part of the job puts us in a somewhat semi-adversarial position sometimes. But of course, the coaches and athletes spend way more time in the sport than we ever do. I have a day job. Coach's day job is to live fencing all day long.
If they've got an opinion that's nuanced about something that I'm doing, I think it's worth hearing. I know from my own development, I learned the most from those conversations, especially in conjunction with what I was hearing from referees because they put them both together, and you can kind of see what everyone expects fencing to be, and it makes what your job is a lot clearer. The bottom line is, I think folks should just do it a bunch. And I think if you have folks that are listening who are thinking about doing it, I would say, please do it. I think we have an amazing cadre at these national events. But I don't think anyone would disagree with me if I said we could always use more help. We're probably short staffed even now just in terms of long hours and the number of bouts that we have to move through. There's really no way to learn except by doing it. So that's what I would say.
[0:34:41] BW: Great. Thank you so much. We'll kind of leave it there for today. Thanks to Matt Tucker for joining us, and sharing your journey in the world of fencing, and fencing refereeing. Best of luck tomorrow and throughout Summer Nationals as you continue to referee and beyond.
[0:34:56] MT: Yes. Thanks, Bryan.
[0:34:57] BW: Thank you.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:34:58] BW: Thanks for listening to First to 15, the official podcast of USA Fencing. We'll be back with our next conversation in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, you can stay up to date on all the latest fencing news by following us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. If you liked this podcast, please help us grow and reach more people by leaving us a rating or review. Until next time, I'm Bryan Wendell, and I hope to see you real soon out on the Strip. Bye.
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