I went to my first tournament today. My main goal was to not finish last. My that-would-be-awesome goal was to survive the first cut and make it into the elimination rounds (thus earning my Salle Auriol patch). And of course the real goal was to not embarrass myself. On those standards, I did fairly well. The field was 25 fencers, ranging from a C rank to unrated (ranks are A-E and unrated; I’m unrated of course). We had five pools of five, then five more pools of five. You fence everyone in your pool, a 5-point bout, then everyone is ranked based on wins and points, then you go into a single elimination. For this tournament, they cut the field to 16 after the pools. I won one in my first pool, none in my second, and finished 22 out of 25. So I didn’t finish last (yay!), didn’t make the cut (boo!), and didn’t really embarrass myself (yay!).

yes, that’s me in the neon green socks.

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yeah, I haven't really been keeping up with these posts. partly that's because a lot of them would say "I sucked and then I was tired". I have been improving a bit, but who feels like coming home tired and sweaty and blogging? anyhoo. bouts tonight with julia, andy, and byron. with both julia and andy, I felt like I was mostly in control of the bout -- mostly seeing their attacks coming and countering them, or able to come up with attacks that succeeded. not entirely of course, but more than usual.

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Another pretty good night of fencing. I tried different shoes for footwork (my old gray new balance gym shoes, which are basically running shoes) and they were awful. I think I'll try some fencing shoes, or something similar like squash shoes. In footwork, we practiced some moves based on taking a half step as a feint, then backing off (or attacking). You do a little head-fake or maybe an extend with the half step forward to make it convincing. I'm trying to use the half-step (in either direction) to mess with distance and open an attack.

I forget who all my bouts were against, but one was against Alec, who killed me last time we fenced. He's a big imposing guy, and he would chase me down the strip, daring me to try and take his blade, then he'd disengage and hit me. This time, I used my newfound lessons (and confidence) and would back up, then at the right moment tap his blade to take right-of-way and attack, or step in and take his blade. a few times I just counterattacked and managed to land. He still got more of those points than I did (and won our bout 5-3), but I forced him to rethink his attack. Then I fenced Laren, who destroyed me, though I had a few good moments.

So, I haven't really been writing about my new hobby (or old hobby -- I fenced foil and saber for a couple years when I was about 10-12 and took it up again this past october). But I think I'm going to start trying to post about it, mostly so I can track myself a bit.

Tonight was a good night, which was nice because last week was pretty bad; both nights last week my shins hurt too much for me to finish footwork, and I was pretty low-energy for my bouts. Monday I actually think I was dehydrated and had to stop before I passed out. Anyway, tonight we did a little tournament, to rank people for the men's foil team, but all men were invited to join in.
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