So, seriously what a crazy weekend. The club held its monthly tournament, and it turns out we were all pretty busy. We are a foil club, but everyone of our foilist had previous engagements. So we never got the strong event we are known for. Next month will be different, but yeah open foil was a two person event. I came in at the end of the DE. It was nice to talk to the people there, but not much was going on. I should have fenced in it, I would have earned my first foil medal. oh well. Like I said, next month we will be back to our strong foil event.
Sunday was the day of CRAZINESS. Open Epee and E & under foil... Yes I am so sorry to all my epee friends, I fenced foil. It felt dirty. But more on that later. The epee team came with as many members as we could muster, I think we had seven maybe six. For some reason I was really calm before I hand. I did lots of warming up and felt good. When pools were called I had a pool i felt I could really handle, maybe win them all and get a good seeding. And I have been practicing the reffing thing so myself and one of my club mates in my pool were reffing it.
OK, so reffing... I am a novice at it and evidently I made a really bad call, and EVERYONE told me so. I felt bad. After being explained how the call should be made by someone with more experience with these kind of things I went ahead and reversed my call (which wasn't a problem because the guy I called it on was telling me I was wrong too). I also forgot to turn on the timing device a couple times. *sigh* Oh and I thought it would be cute to say something along the lines of "fence again" instead of just fence... that confused the crap out of the fencers. Soooo, what my reffing came down to was I will not do it again until I am all set for it. the Club mate did a much better job, and since we had the slow pool the dedicated refs came over and double stripped us and had good reffing. So if you were one of those unfortunate fencers I reffed, I am sorry. Don't worry, Brian will be back next months so we can have at least three dedicated refs again.
So that was my bad reffing story. Now for my bad fencing story. You know how I always have a problem with frustration, and every tournament I am trying to just have fun and not worry about the result? Well I did it!!! I did it so well that I just did not care. At all. I mean in a pool I could have won all my matches and probably should have only lost one at most, I lost three. I went 4-5 in two of my losses and 4-1 in the other. I just wasn't feeling the push I normally have. I could see all the actions, I just did nothing about them. In one of my losses I went behind like 4-0 and then brought it to 4-4 because I was like "WOAH someone is going to yell at me." Never frustrated though. Maybe I need to just completely relearn to fence in this mindset. one of my opponents in my pool came up to me afterwards and commented that he did not know what was up with my fencing. He thought my mind was somewhere else. It wasn't, instead it was just fencing for the sake of fun.
I seeded 10th and was going up against the coach from an across town club. I was not all that worried about it. Little did I know that the A-rated fencer had gotten knocked out by one of her clubmates so it was up to me to keep it a B-rated event, and I knew going into the tournament that my clubs two Cs were going to be in the final. If I had known that I may have had more of the push to win, but my mindset was still just, "eh, it doesn't matter if you win or lose, just come out of the match smiling." Unfortunately that was where my head was. There is no doubt in my mind that I should have won that match, hell I essentially gave him like 5 flicks in a row because he did them so well. It was pretty watching it, I was hypnotized or something. Once again though, it something my coach does to me, I know how to deal with it, I just did not. I know, I feel bad. I hate that I lost a match that should have been a walk in the park because of the mental thing, and I hate that I cost my buddy a B. Interestingly that same buddy fenced the opponent that beat me the next round and beat him the exact way I should have fenced him, and I know it. *sigh* my best mate still made the round of 8, but that was only one B, myself and the A rated fencer got knocked out in the round of 16.
Then it was time for foil. WHY DID I THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA? Of course I plan on picking up foil next season, so I wanted to get started, and an E and under seemed like a good idea. My lame was a little tight making it hard to take a deep breath, and I was using club foils which did not seem to like me. I did not suck terribly. I sucked... just not terribly. I kept making these huge circle 8s in an attempt to take the blade. And whenever my opponents changed the line of attack on me I fell for it. It was kind of funny. Afterwards my coaches said to me that I was essentially just running a drill for the other fencers. Well at least I can always serve as a bad example. Of the six people I finished 4th I think. Between you and me, I would have liked to have won a medal, but oh well, 4th in my first foil tournament is something to be proud of.
As for foil, that white light goes off ALL THE TIME!!!! I mean wtf!? And I do not just mean off target, I mean when no one was hitting anybody. Sometimes I would just touch their blade and it was off target. WHY!? a couple times the foil was funky but sometimes we could not figure out what was going on. I may never complain about epee weapon problems again. And in one of my DEs my opponents body cord kept coming undone.... LIKE 10 TIMES!!! can they not put a neat clip like epee has? I guess that is why the bayonet plug exists. The only thing that was frustrating the entire day was that retarded white light. I do not know how you foilist deal with that. I would be jumping up and down throwing a fit. Of course half of my white lights were off targets (but close to being on target) and you don't have to deal with that as often.
Well that is all I have to type about the tournament. Not all to say, there were a bunch of other things to discuss, but not here. I have a great project in the works too, I can't wait to share it with you all. I think I may go as far as to say it will be the best thing that has ever happened to any of us. I know, I am excited too. Stay tuned for more updates... i hope to be able to give some real details within a couple weeks.
04-21-2008 09:58 AM