Strategies for team events

[suterces]

I am sure there are quite a lot of threads covering different strategies for individual pool and direct elimination bouts. But how about strategies for team events? The two common team formats that I know of is to 9 five touches bouts to 45 points with cumulative points (most USFA events), and 9 individual five touches bouts best 5 out of 9 wins (many scholastic events). I would love to hear strategies for both events.

For those who have competed many times in team events, what have you learned? Specific bouts with details will be nice too.

Thanks!

[rocky]

I've learned the importance of always constantly giving positive reinforcement to my teammates, because only by supporting them at all times can you count on them to pull through the difficult bouts. Also, I've learned how to read people better, because knowing when or if you should pull a teammate for your alternate is extremely valuable. Also team's really a mental trip, as I think the pressure is often higher there, cause you really don't want to let down your team, and it's dealing with that pressure and maintaining a high sense of morale that leads to wins.

[fencerbill]

In relay it is supremely important for your best fencer to go last with your next best just before him. So you fill out your order based on that.

In the 9 bout variety it is good to have your best fencer last but you have to get to him! If your team loses 5 bouts before his last you might say you could have used him sooner. Any other comments about this?

[darius]

In relay it is supremely important for your best fencer to go last with your next best just before him. So you fill out your order based on that.

Generally, yes.

However, that may or may not be true in epee/foil, if the bouts aren't expected to last long. If you anticipate being up at the end, it might be better to have a fencer who knows how to waste time.

Sometimes the best fencer isn't necessarily the best anchor. Some people can step it up or fence out of their mind to win the last bout of a team match.

In the 9 bout variety it is good to have your best fencer last but you have to get to him! If your team loses 5 bouts before his last you might say you could have used him sooner. Any other comments about this?

It's situational, but I'd say it's good to have your best fencer finish first; that way, his 3 bouts are always accounted for. If that's the one that puts you into the W category, the pressure is off the other two.

darius

[epeemike81]

More specific question:

do you prefer 1-2-3 or 4-5-6, and why?

-m

[bigdawg2121]

For scholastic style events the question of side is usually not up to you... That being said I think I prefer "B Side" b.c. it allows your number 2 to fence the opposing number 1 fencer first. Given a stronger team it's convenient to have that out of the way. This particular method is also most conducive to securing the "early" kill. If you fail to secure the early kill in this situation the late kill is still possible as you have stronger fencers with weaker bouts later on.

[akaiyuki]

Originally Posted by epeemike81

More specific question:

do you prefer 1-2-3 or 4-5-6, and why?

-m

Good question... If I recall correctly I always choose to B side since everyone seems to perfer that side Never really pay attention/bothered to investigate the reason tho.

[AAAI]

.....

[fencerbill]

Originally Posted by darius

Generally, yes.

However, that may or may not be true in epee/foil, if the bouts aren't expected to last long. If you anticipate being up at the end, it might be better to have a fencer who knows how to waste time.

Excellent comments. It does depend on whether you expect to be up or down near the end. I have only watched George Masin fence a few DE bouts. They typically would end with scores like 3-2 or 5-4. He would not necessarily be the best fencer to be last if you were behind by 5 touches.

On the contrary, years ago I refereed Wellesley several times during an all day college multi-meet. They had one Epee fencer whose longest bout of the day was 19 seconds. Set up distance, take, go - touch! If you were behind, that type of fencer would be what you want.

[DHCJr]

Originally Posted by fencerbill

In relay it is supremely important for your best fencer to go last with your next best just before him. So you fill out your order based on that.

In the 9 bout variety it is good to have your best fencer last but you have to get to him! If your team loses 5 bouts before his last you might say you could have used him sooner. Any other comments about this?

I would have thought that was universal, until I went to my first World Cup, this last Las Vegas.

The U.S. had the second fencer fencing last. I got all this second hand. The reason was who was likely to be the last fencer on the other team. Also which fencer was hungriest for a win.

[Sciurus-Rex]

It's fairly easy most of the time to second-guess your opposing team's pick for their anchor. And knowing that, it might be better to match your player against him (or her) based on individual style differences or past performances, rather than overall strength. ... For example, X might not do well against J, but X's teammate Y has a much better record against J, even though X is considered the better fencer in all other cases.

[samh]

Scirius-Rex's above example happened for me at Canadian nationals, I was on a team that had 3 people of fairly similar strength (no obvious favourite for anchor) and my coach put me as anchor because I had a good record against the person who he felt was sure to be the other team's anchor. In this case it worked and we made the L8 but I've seen other cases where making the order based on previous results has turned out badly.
And I think generally with no knowledge of the other team the better order is the one that allows you to start and finish with the same fencer. This allows you to (hopefully) get out to an early lead and to finish strongly.

[dramamine]

the only strategy i have for team events besides winning is to remind the weaker members of the team that going out there and stalling and getting hit once or twice (i am a foil fencer) is a hell of a lot better than going balls out and getting owned and making the stronger fencer make up for it. so a team with 2 strong members and 1 guy who is good at not giving openings and moving around can do extremely well against another team who has 3 fencers who are all stronger than the weak link of the other team.

[smurfette]

Common -- and helpful -- comments that I have encountered when I have fenced team (and which my coach has always emphasized): First, you win as a team, and you lose as a team. So that keeps things simple. You must do your job, but there is no time to beat yourself up, have ego moments, etc. Second, we have also tried our best to keep the score low -- that is, to really work for the perfect touch and to take one's time setting it up. This not only encourages patient, careful, and active fencing, but also leaves room at the end for lots of things to happen without hitting up against the 45 touch limit. Regarding order, etc: it simply all depends. Not just on the strength of the fencers (or a fencer), but on the day a person is having, matchups, etc. A good coachor captain will take all of these into account when deciding order. For instance, depending on the potential matchups, it might even be a good idea to have the anchor be a sub.

[suterces]

Suppose you have a team of 3 fencers. Fencer C is new. Fencer A is slightly better than fencer B. Fencer A is also much better at fencing under pressure.

Scenario: At a scholastic best 5 out of 9 bouts wins event, this team comes across another team and expects this to be a very close match (based on past records). This will likely turn out to be a 5-4 win for either team. Now for the team that I described, who would you put last?

Fencer C? Perhaps hoping this team would have pulled off the 5 victories needed before fencer C fences the last bout?
Fencer B? Hoping that fencer A would have already gotten the 5th victory thus relieving pressure off of fencer B?
Fencer A? Leaving this to probably be the final bout that decides the match, and fencer A would be best at handling it?

[keropie]

Really, the only thing that 'matters' there is the ability to handle pressure. If we have team one (1,2,3) and team two (4,5,6), then outside of pressure, the better fencer in each pairing 'should' win. Or, if there are stylistic match ups that change whether 2 will beat 4 (for example), then the match ups should be the same regardless of when they occur.

The exception to this is when you fence to completion only (first team to 5 wins, the end, which is NOT the NCAA method, in which you always fence 9 bouts, even if team one wins the first 5 bouts) and 'indicator' matters (it's a pool or some sort of seeding round). In that case, if you think you'll probably lose (especially before the last bout), you'd probably put your weakest fencer in the final bout, hoping to hide the 'indicator' hit.

But generally in the dual meet format, it's not all that important outside of psychological concerns. You win 5 of the 9 bouts, you win. You don't, you don't.

In relay format, order becomes more important in a variety of ways, well covered above.

[fencerbill]

The several submissions here are extremely weapon dependent.

I think Sabre. There will be no bouts with only a few touches. Each one will have one of the fencers scoring to the next multiple of 5.

Avoiding hits against is a strategy that can be applied to Epee and perhaps also to Foil.

DHCjr's comments, I assume, applied to the Sabre Gold Medal Match in Las Vegas. Let us compare this to, for example, the Senior Team Sabre event at Summer Nationals.

In Atlanta it is quite likely that the fencers on the two teams do not know each other too well and it is equally probable that one or both does not have a coach there to support them. So you are filling out your order based on what you think your fencers are likely to do against anonymous opponents. Perhaps you do know something about them but it is unlikely your fencers would have had 5 or even any bouts against them.

In Las Vegas, you have Ed Korfanty and Arkady Burdan and the Team Captain and a bunch of other people adding their brain power. You have seen these opponents probably at 10 World Championships or World Cups. You do have knowledge of probably multiple bouts between each of your fencers and each of theirs. You have the best talent the US can line up to evaluate how the US fencers are doing on that day and how the other team's fencers are doing that day. You know which of your fencers has dings and which ones are walking around with ice bags.

Don has said the US put their second best fencer last. But was it the second best fencer as of that hour of that day against the individuals that the other country has fenced in which order on that day?

We don't know why they did it that way. It turned out what they did was right. I wasn't there to see it, wish I had been. My reflection on seeing the results was that the fencer they picked to fence last was probably the one with the least mental scars and bad memories. Sometimes it is best not to know what you can't do, three cheers for youth.

[KD5MDK]

fencerbill is quite right that sabre teams cannot get away with telling their weakest fencer to burn time and try to keep the score down.

I am not as sure about the evaluation of the team events at Summer Nationals. Certainly to some extent it is true, lots of teams were formed more or less for fun and with almost no experience working together. However, lots of the teams did seem to have some pretty good cohesion. Look at the amazing results NWFC pulled off in the team event. Either all their fencers are that amazing, or Michael Marx (who was there at all their gold bouts, at least, which is most of what I watched) has figured out some good magic to get his fencers to do extra well as a team.
Or there's the Div I WS, which had all of 4 teams involved. Given the clubs (OFA, FC, PWF, and Mt. Valley) I'm pretty sure they had coaching if they wanted it and plenty of experience in how their opponents fence.

[tbryan]

Originally Posted by epeemike81

do you prefer 1-2-3 or 4-5-6, and why?

In a 45-touch relay, I recently won a coin toss and got to pick. We chose 4-5-6. We did not know anything about the opposing team's fencers, but our team had an alternate. In the 4-5-6, fencer 6 has the first and next to last bouts. I knew who we wanted in the next to last bout. He was possibly the "best" fencer on the team, but he was somewhat inconsistent. If he's on, he's solid against pretty much every fencer he hits. As our alternate, we kept probably the most consistent fencer on the team.

So, I wanted 4-5-6. The bout order starts 6, 5, 4. That lets us see fencer 6 first to see how he's feeling. If he's having trouble getting his game together, we would sub him after his first bout and let him take some time to get his head together. If fencer 6 is looking okay, we consider how fencer 4 (still recovering from an injury) is doing and possibly sub the alternate for him.

[DHCJr]

Originally Posted by fencerbill

DHCjr's comments, I assume, applied to the Sabre Gold Medal Match in Las Vegas. Let us compare this to, for example, the Senior Team Sabre event at Summer Nationals.

In Las Vegas, you have Ed Korfanty and Arkady Burdan and the Team Captain and a bunch of other people adding their brain power. You have seen these opponents probably at 10 World Championships or World Cups. You do have knowledge of probably multiple bouts between each of your fencers and each of theirs. You have the best talent the US can line up to evaluate how the US fencers are doing on that day and how the other team's fencers are doing that day. You know which of your fencers has dings and which ones are walking around with ice bags.

Don has said the US put their second best fencer last. But was it the second best fencer as of that hour of that day against the individuals that the other country has fenced in which order on that day?

We don't know why they did it that way. It turned out what they did was right. I wasn't there to see it, wish I had been. My reflection on seeing the results was that the fencer they picked to fence last was probably the one with the least mental scars and bad memories. Sometimes it is best not to know what you can't do, three cheers for youth.

It was Las Vegas as I said and it was definitely the #2 fencer. Murial the day before had easily won the Gold. Sada was fighting a flu bug the day before and looked it. Rebecca had to fight to get the placing she did. She was ready for revenge. They even substituted out Murial and Sada that day.

I was told that Ed likes to throw curves to the other team, so they never know who is going to be in that last position. It has backfired at times. He put Rebecca in the last position the year before and they got the Bronze.