Vote For Ringo. Vote For Bonk!!!

So after 8 years bitching and ranting about the state of the Steel Fighting in America I’m actually stepping up to try to do something organizationally. I’m running for AMCF BOD. I want to take some time to explain why, what I see the orgs place as, and what I think I can/will try to do in the position. I also want to explain things I won’t do in place. This will probably be less silly than my self nomination video and also a lot of my writing so tune out now if not into specifics and details of policy

First off let’s talk about what I see the AMCF as and why I want to run. The AMCF was created with a goal of being the umbrella org for any leagues, clubs, and any other orgs in the USA that wanted to participate in IMCF(or possibly with IMCF rules). It struggled to become that but managed to step into the role when the ACL dissolved. The AMCF at the time pretty much only existed to provide insurance and run a single tournament to select IMCF reps, based on their public actions. Recently Cyrus D’ondre became president and outlined a far more ambitious role for the AMCF. Knowing what a hustler and worker Cyrus is, I’m super excited for the future of the AMCF and would like to be part of it in any way I can. If that’s as a board member where I can use my voice and experience in the sport to advocate and vote to advance activities that will grow the sport or make it better all the better. If not, that’s ok, I will work as a volunteer and member while continuing the personal activities I have done previously to help improve communication and knowledge.

With the reasoning out of the way, time to dive into what I believe the role of the AMCF is(and is not) and how I think I can help with that role. To me the AMCF is perfectly positioned to act as an overall governing body similar to the US Soccer Federation(though other sports models such as Roller Derby are worth examining) where the primary role of the federation itself is training refs, managing rules, and preparing the international team. There is certainly a place to discuss how affiliation with domestic leagues and other orgs will work, but for now I think those are the three primary responsibilities. A fourth responsibility would be general promotion of the sport, which would include communication about events and news, helping clubs and teams to grow and train, supporting initiatives to improve the underserved populations of the sport in America (pretty much everything that isn’t mens 5v5).

I believe I’m well positioned to help with this. For one thing I’ve been in the sport fairly long considering how young it is and am one of the earliest vets from the second wave still active at this time. Far more than that though in that time I’ve been actively questioning and proposing improvements. I was one of the first people writing on the sport and despite the number of times that has fallen off I believe I’m still the most consistent. I have been a coach/trainer at the first dedicated gym to the sport and used to travel around(often on my own money and never for more than the cost of travel) around the country to help clubs build training programs. I was a captain of a team back in ACL days(one that regularly finished 1st or 2nd). I was one of the first people to start doing stats and have created a guide and template that anyone can use to record their (or anyone’s) team’s stats. I have worked as a ref, counter, and support at numerous tournaments and other events, as well as event runner building multiple very successful outrance fight cards. I helped make the push for streaming and recording of events and was the first local person doing streams and recordings with commentators. I’ve fought internationally at IMCF championships in almost every category I’m eligible for(longsword, 5v5, 10v10, 16v16) and I’ve also served as a marshall there. I have pushed for and helped set up women’s only events locally and traveled to support them in other areas. I have helped write and edit rules, actively stood up against leadership decisions that hurt the sport to my detriment, and been one of a few people actively trying to spread the news of all buhurt events through my youtube channel, twitch, and blog.

As you can see I have been quite active not just fighting but working to grow the sport. I believe this speaks to my energy in helping out as well as my knowledge and ability to bring perspective. Recently I have been actively taking national surveys of the state of the sport. While I have made these public, I believe my familiarity and study of them, as well as my willingness to sacrifice my time to build these and analyze the results, speaks to my familiarity with the community’s wishes and my desire to help those come true. However all this is just vague BS without some specifics on how.

I won’t call this an action plan as I do not believe my role as BOD member(if I’m elected) would be to make or implement policy. That, to me, would be the President’s job, who already appears to have one and so far I’m 100% on board. Instead I would imagine my job is to advise, occasionally vote when a decision is important enough, and serve as a volunteer helping make the policies happen and gathering information to help make better decisions. So these are not plans so much as initiatives I would lend my voice to as well as perhaps suggest implementation details.

National Ref Certification Course
1. The most common complaint after every event is “The refs sucked about X” or sometimes just the refs sucked. Of course this is the most common complaint in sport. Athletes and fans will always moan about calls that don’t go their way. That said compared to other sports I’ve participated in, buhurt reffing is a few steps below in terms of consistency and competency. AMCF could be a great resource to help improve that via training materials, camps, and certification exams.
2. This is a common practice to almost every other sport and was even an initiative HMBIA had begun. However HMBIA rules differ from IMCF and there was concern before that refs certified for HMBIA would not be allowed to ref other rulesets and maintain their certification. While HMBIA is currently not an entity, it is possible this problem could rise again with its successor, though we hope not. Either way it is clear that certification was a concern for them and it should be for IMCF based refs as well, so a separate certification would be a good solution.
3. This is an area AMCF can take a leadership role internationally as the IMCF has to my knowledge not rolled out a solution to this problem(though it’s possible they have and not included USA as we are not currently a member country after the ACL dissolution). We can be one of the first and help define the process, which will help the reputation of USA buhurt internationally as well as possibly draw international fighters and refs to our events.
4. Running a once(or multiple) time a year ref camp to establish an initial group of certified refs, who can provide training at home would be a good start. Putting up videos showing how to evaluate weapons and armor as well as common situations that could be hard to call. Requiring refs at AMCF events to be certified(and paying them for their time) would be an incentive to get people to get certified.
5. There are multiple directions to go from there, including an online exam, but deciding where to go would require evaluating how it is done in other sports as well as what appears to be working and not working for us.
Team USA coach
1. Anyone who has tried to be the coach of a team while also fighting will know how difficult it can be. It’s exceedingly hard to make adjustments between rounds when you spent your time worrying about your fight and direct opponents. It robs you of a chance to evaluate your fighters, the other team, and how the fight progresses through the list and round. Beyond that, after a particularly difficult fight, having to think about even simple decisions while catching your breath, is much harder than when just watching. I’ve seen captains struggle to even count the right number of fighters to fill a line after a hard round(and even occasionally struggled with it myself).
2. In addition to this a dedicated coach can spend the time at the tourney studying other teams and their team to make not just tactical but strategic decisions, freeing up all fighters to worry about just fighting(note I highly encourage fighters to also study teams I just acknowledge its another responsibility that can interfere with getting in the zone for some). Shifting the responsibilities of talking to refs, gathering fighters, information, to a person whose job is dedicated will help reduce stress and should lead to better fighting results(as well as better results in the other fields).
3. AMCF can work to train and select one or more coaches to serve team USA, well before the championship and even the qualifiers/team selection. These people will know they will not be fighting(at least not in the events they are coaching) and can spend the year studying tactics and teams from other countries as well as locally. They can work to learn training techniques to push to the selected fighters. They can run practices dedicated to team USA training.
4. Of course, having AMCF select a coach(or team of coaches) is most important when dealing with teams of fighters who do not regularly train/fight together and likely already have a captain/coach who puts together strategy. With the current AMCF selection method, the mens and womens primary melee teams will be club teams that have their preferred method. However most of those teams still use a fighter as a coach, and thus could at least benefit from shifting responsibility the day of the fight to someone who will not be suffering from a fighter brain. Such a coach should be selected by that team, so it is someone they respect, will listen to, and wont try to change things that already work just because they are in charge now.
5. All mass teams though will be made up groups of fighters who at best train together, but likely will contain a number of mercs from other teams and the mens 16s will be made of two teams who very likely do not train and fight together. Having a coach, whose job it is to cement those fighters into a team and has been preparing to do so seems like a much better path to victory than just figuring it out on the fly.
6. Lastly, while I acknowledge the current method is popular, I continue to believe and advocate for a more traditional approach involving actual tryouts, some form of combine, and a training camp where different combinations and lines can be tried to find not only the best fighters but the best groupings instead of just assuming clubs groupings are inherently better. I believe the Dominus method is currently proving this and we should look to that as inspiration for what AMCF can do.
7. This is a long topic and deserves its own post(and likely I have made at least one before here) but such an option would require a more traditional coach role. And even if we keep the current selection method, a team usa training camp, would benefit the competitors, and such a camp would benefit from a coach or coaching team.
Communication and Presentation
1. While I am clearly not the most professional human ever to try commenting on a sport, I do believe I do a decent job at the basics. The AMCF is in a great position to push the communication of the sport(something desperately needed) by maintaining a calendar of most if not all domestic events, reporting on big news(results, rules changes, new trends, armorers entering the market and reputation of those around)
2. The AMCF can also put together a guide to streaming/recording/commentary, to help event runners achieve better results in these areas. Event runners can go do the research on their own, but as most of them are doing this as volunteers and don’t likely have a passion for broadcasting, asking them to be on top of their other responsibilities is unreasonable. We can centralize some basic best practices including equipment guides(perhaps rentals or loaners) to help make this happen.
3. Buhurt 101: There alot of people in the sport who are isolated from the hot spots of training. AMCF can help publish the current best understood meta and techniques from those people achieving the most success.
4. History 101: Many people get into the sport because they are already deeply into history. Others find interest after joining. Still others find the history portion tedious. History is deeply tied to the sport both in culture and in Authenticity rules. The AMCF can present some basic history information either to help inform people learning about knights for the first time or to help people document their kit.
5. Centralizing all this information will make the AMCF a much more valuable resource than perhaps any other online buhurt site.
Fundraising to Grow the Sport
1. I have in my time successfully managed a number of fundraising campaigns, to get myself, teams, or other fighters armor, tickets to events, training fees. I have also put my own money up to support fighters in need a number of times. I believe that I can help put together a number of fundraisers, based on selling swag/merch, auctioning off donations, helping getting sponsors, or simply goodwill through challenges.
2. I would like to advocate that AMCF create a fund for supporting clubs and fighters with a preference for making the following happen
  1. Womens fighting: Womens fighting still lag far behind men’s in numbers of fighters and events. In many cases consistent access to top training is also lacking(though that may be true for fighters across the board). Sponsoring women in need of armor and tickets to events who have shown they are members of the community likely to stick around and help grow the sport is one good use of funds. Helping clubs/orgs run women specific events is another. Running an AMCF women’s event would not be a bad use either.
  2. Duels: Dueling is the oft forgotten part of the sport that is often done only when there aren’t enough fighters for melees. Helping dueling events kick off(or helping orgs launch a dueling league)
  3. Club growth: Many clubs are doing great work recruiting, but struggle to get training space or real lists. The AMCF could create a fund to help pay for those on either a lottery basis or selection based on need/best submission.
  4. Streaming/Recording: Again and again people complain about the lack of quality easy to access footage of the sport. The AMCF can and should support people working to improve that dearth in the sport.
  5. League Seasons: While I do not think the AMCF has a place running a league or season itself, I do think as helping growing the sport it could partner with any league that agreed to follow it’s principles and mission to help them get regional/national seasons with championship playoffs. That model is the one most recognized by American sports fans and supporting groups attempting to make a true season with schedule and playoffs could be a great way to build a consistent fan base.