April saw the 5th Referees Seminar to be held at Kashi-no- Ki-Ken-Yu-Kai dojo at Ollerton hosted by Trevor Chapman and taught by nanadan Mike Davies who had travelled over from his luxury villa in Spain just to give us another day’s instruction.

With current grading guidelines of the BKA in mind I was surprised to see the same old faces at this seminar. I know there is referee slot on each of the main training seminars through out the year but the referee seminars are still the best place to spend an entire day doing just this. After all we need this knowledge to grade and we need more referees at Taikai’s. For those of you who might have thought ‘I’m not up for refereeing yet’ the seminar is a good opportunity for a shiai practice and being there you also get the benefit of Sensei’s instruction and it gives those of us refereeing a larger group with a range of experience to judge.

The day followed the same pattern as the other seminars with people divided into 2 groups. Those who were there to try and improve their knowledge of refereeing, and those who did the actually matches.

The first section was devoted to ensuring we all knew the correct method of handling the flags and the correct signals and commands to use.

This was followed by the proper procedure for entering and exiting the shiai-jo and rotating the referees. This was done both as a team match Taikai and for an individual Taikai as well as demonstrating the procedure for the first and last match of the day. It sound simple and it is but we still made mistakes despite several of us having attended these seminars before. Like everything else ‘It’s Practice’ again and again.

Once this was being performed to Mike’s satisfaction we then got under way with refereeing actual matches.

This is always where the fun starts. At the end of each match depending on circumstances we were asked why we gave or not as the case may be any particular decision. Fortunately Mike was there to give concise answers to any questions and lucid explanations as to what was correct and what was not particularly as to what constitutes a correct strike and Ippon.

We did this practice for the larger part of the day by the end of which I felt everyone had made improvements in their understanding of what is required to be a referee.

The last hour of the day was a general ji-geiko.

Thanks to Trevor for organising it and Mike for teaching and especially to those of you who fought hard and long for the day to give us something to referee.

Steve Plimbley

Kagami Shin Kendo