This weekend was the first time for two things for me: Visiting Toronto and meeting somebody from fencing.net who I didn't already know in person.
I met Glowstix in the morning and the two of us warmed up together before seniors. After that he ended up going 4-1 in his pool and I went 5-1 in mine.
My only loss was to Arseni Tikhomirov, who is basically a miniature version of his father and has improved a lot recently.
Anyways going into d.e.'s I was seeded 5th and got a bye through the first round. In the next round I had a young fencer from my club who I had coached in his first round win. I won that one pretty easily and found out that I had to fence glowstix in the next round. I had a lot of difficulty scoring attacks on him when we warmed up so I fenced very cautiously in our match. The score moved fairly slowly and I was up a couple of touches most of the match, towards the end I pulled away a bit and ended up winning 15-11.
One bizarre occurrence during the match was the complete reversal of one of the director's call. What happened was that glowstix did a fleche, i did a parry or two and then got (a fairly lucky) riposte to his foot as he passed. Initially the ref called no touch. I said "no that is a touch" he says "no" again and then I repeat "no I did one action as he passed, that's a touch". At this point I was trying to make sure that the ref called future similar actions the way I wanted them but I was shocked when he paused, thought for a moment and then reversed his call to give me the touch. I think it was my touch but it is very uncommon for a ref to reverse something like that so it was surprising.
In the 8 I got killed by a friend of mine. I got really angry part way through the match and ended up running at him for a final score of 15-5.
The next day in junior i managed to go 2-4 in my pool (despite being ranked #1 in the competition) before calming down in the d.e. table. In the first round I had a cadet from my club and almost immediately during the match I managed to lose my temper again. At 1-0 for my opponent, he and I got into an infighting situation where both of us tried a few times to touch each other before the ref called halt. At the halt (which was early in my opinion) I stopped fencing and then was hit by my opponent. The ref calls the touch as 'with the halt' and I go down 2-0. Normally I wouldn't have let something like that effect me but at this competition I couldn't stay calm. I ended up getting down 5-1 before I managed to calm down. At that point I was able to fence very well for the rest of the match and managed to close it out 15-9.
In the next round I had another cadet from my club who had done well in pools (seeded 3rd) and when I went to talk to him before our match I realised that he really wanted to beat me. He didn't speak a word before our match and sat in a chair without moving for 15 minutes before we started.
Normally I can beat him fairly well but on that day he fenced with a lot of intensity and skill. Our match was very close, I was able to get up one or two points again and again, only for him to claw his way back into the match. I was really looking to string some touches together to build some separation and take his intensity out of the equation and I thought I had an opportunity when I was up 10-8. The day before he had fenced a match with another of our teammates which had been very close until 9-9 when the other fencer pulled away and ended up winning 15-11 or so. However this time he didn't cave at all and came back to tie it at 10. Eventually I managed to build a 14-13 lead with 17 seconds left and got a nice opposition 4 after he disengaged my 6 to finish it off.
In the 8 I ran into vince who was on fire and rocked me 15-8.
Both the result in senior and junior were slightly worse than I expected but I think that is attributable to the lack of lessons and fencing lately. For the last 3 weeks or so our club has just been doing physical training and my technique definitely didn't feel as sharp as usual when I was getting blown out by fencers against whom I generally have close victories.
The competition was a good tune-up before nationals which is in a month and a half. If I can keep up the physical stuff and add lessons and drills I will feel very confident going into the competition.
05-12-2008 07:48 PM