BCSSA Officials - FAQ - Competition and Conflict

As you read this article, we are approaching the last weeks of the “competitive” season and as the competitors continue to refine and improve their technique, so hopefully do we as officials.  Unfortunately, it is also about this time that some of the regional directors of officials as well as myself have begun dealing with situations that result from “conflict”.

 

Aquatic activities, like any other competitive sport, provide the same opportunities for conflict to develop.  Competitors test the limits of the rules to gain an advantage, coaches and parents challenge the decisions of officials regarding a disqualification or the results of a race or competition, clubs and parents question the eligibility of competitors, and so it goes.  We may like to think that we are “different” from hockey or soccer, and that the inappropriate behaviour we have read or heard about, or seen for ourselves in other sports “doesn’t happen here”.

 

Unfortunately this is not the case, as many of us can attest from personal observation or experience.  In my early days as an official, at our club’s annual banquet I was “awarded” a small yellow plastic baseball bat to enable me to “better resolve future harassment from irate parents”.  This was in reference to an incident earlier in the season involving a very upset parent who had followed me along the deck in subsequent heats in my role as a stroke official, berating me for a disqualification I had made. 

 

This incident and its “tongue-in-cheek” solution were in the days before such behavior along with more serious outcomes forced responsible administrators of sport, particularly at the youth level, to recognize the need for better ways of addressing such problems.  In the BCSSA, the outcome has been the formulation of an harassment policy and the presentation of clinics to provide participants with the ability to recognize harassment and to deal with it effectively.  These clinics have been a requirement for senior officials for some time, but I recommend that officials at all levels take advantage of these clinics when they are given.  All clinics coordinators are encouraged to review BCSSA’s harassment policy during their presentations and workshop materials are available to support these discussions.  Clinics are scheduled at every Provincials Championship.  Not just officials, but all members of BCSSA are invited and encouraged to attend.

 

More recently, it has been recognized that some charges of harassment evolve out of unresolved conflict issues and therefore by improving our ability to resolve conflicts we decrease the chances of a “problem” escalating into one of harassment.  For most of us, our ability to resolve issues of conflict (or harassment) is limited by our personal reluctance to get involved.  We are uncomfortable confronting emotional behaviour.  However, the best time to address such problems is to do so immediately, and not to defer it to others.

 

To be willing to be proactive in these matters and to confront a distasteful situation, we need tools to assist us and some practice at using these tools.  Conflict resolution clinics provide that opportunity.  But we need to attend these clinics, and the more often, the better.   As officials, it is our job to ensure fairness in  competition and harassment and conflict are simply behaviours for gaining an advantage that we all agree are unacceptable.

 

As clinics help with learning the technical details of a stroke, clinics also help us to better understand these behaviours, recognize potential problems and know how to address them effectively before they escalate.

 

If it provides no other benefit that to help us all reflect on our own behaviour during competitions such clinics will have served their purpose.  If more of us are able to remember that it is “just a game” during the excitement of the moment, then fewer incidents of inappropriate behaviour will occur.

 

For more information on harassment and conflict resolution training in your region, contact your Regional Board.  BCSSA’s harassment policy can be found at the BCSSA website.