My dad decided to tag along for the ride down to Bellevue, which made this a lot more fun than it would have been otherwise. We left our place around 6 in the am and avoided the majority of the border line-up by going through the duty-free store.
At the competition I had a pretty easy pool. I wasn't 100% locked in for all my matches but I worked hard in the ones that I felt might be the most difficult (against Strauss and Jongkees) and never had any problems.
I was seeded 1st in the tableau and got a bye to the 32s where I fenced a young guy named Allison. He had a lead for a few seconds but he was still pretty new to fencing and couldn't keep up with me physically or technically. I drew his attacks by pressuring him with my footwork or set up attacks of my own.
After that I had Strauss from my pool. He beat me the last time I did a non-NAC tournament down in the US (back in 2006 or 2005) and so I was kind of stoked to go up against him again. He moves well and uses a french grip and was able to get to a fairly big early lead (5-2, 8-5) but I started being a bit more patient and attacking from a more appropriate distance to catch him at 10 and then finished the match pretty comfortably 15-11.
In the 8s I fenced Farooq, who I've fenced with since I was a kid but had never beaten in a 15 point match. Unfortunately, he has come off of knee injury and surgeries recently so he was not fencing quite up to his usual caliber. I didn't fence too intelligently in this match but neither did he... we were both impatient and at the moment I'm much faster and stronger so I was able to dominate early. He brought it back from 8-3 for me to 12-10 but I stopped his run and closed it out 15-11.
In the semis I fenced Urman, a very good Israeli fencer who was NCAA runner-up a couple years ago. We fenced at a NAC a couple years ago and I remembered how frustrating I had found fencing him then... he moves slowly and is VERY patient but can accelerate quickly to catch opponents by surprise. I let him get a lead early because my legs weren't quite under me enough to outrun his attacks and then he put up an iron curtain of parries which I couldn't get through. He exploited his parry/prise de fer 8 a ridiculous amount during the match which was important for me to think about so that I can devote some attention to stopping that action during the last couple weeks of training before the world cup in Montreal.
The salle at Rain City is beautiful and the tournament was very well run. The only problem I had with the event was that they capped pre-registration a week before the event which might have discouraged some fencers from coming (there were only maybe 50).
I fenced well most of the time and learned a valuable lesson in the one match I lost so this trip was a successful tune-up tournament for the bigger one that's coming soon.
05-25-2009 02:20 AM