I fenced very well at this competition but I was not very smart at a few crucial moments.
Individual was 2 round of pools, no cuts and then direct elimination.
In the 1st round of pools I went 4-1, beat st hilaire but lost to a foilist.
In the 2nd round I went 5-0, partly because I was fencing well and partly because i had a pretty easy pool.
I was seeded 3rd and had a bye to the 32 where I was supposed to fence rich or beaudouin.
Rich is from my club and is a good friend so I went to encourage him. Though he is one of the most technically skilled epee fencers around, he often forgets to use his legs and to keep his actions simple against simple fencers.
Against Beaudouin he was having these problems and I had to coach him to a surprisingly close 15-13 win.
Unfortunately against me he was able to use more of his full-range of skills and won 15-14. It was unfortunate to fence a guy that good that early but my biggest problem against rich was impatience. My defense is way better than my offense so I've got to remember to chill a lot more.
The next day we had team and we started with pools. Unfortunately there were 5 or 6 good teams and one bye in the DE table so the pools were basically all about which team could pound on the beginners they were against the hardest. My team, Brebeuf A ended up seeded 3rd and Brebeuf B was seeded 1st.
1st round we had a pretty easy match. 2nd round was against a bunch of guys that we train against a lot and we ended up winning 45-33 (I was on the bench for this one). Next up we had Estoc B in the semifinal; rich broke the match open with a 5-1 win in the 3rd bout and I won all my matches (not by a lot but it kept the momentum going). We won that one 45-36.
In the final we had MDF, and it was a pretty good match. our anchor had a 4 point lead going into the last bout but ran into max who was on fire. mdf ended up getting a one -touch lead with 4 seconds left and then our anchor's parry riposte was called no good in a VERY controversial decision. Its tough to lose a match like that.
02-25-2008 01:20 AM