I was paid an interesting compliment the other day at the cookout/oyster roast/low country boil after the Savannah Fencing Club's St Pat's Slash. One of the guys told he hat he hated lunging at me. His reasoning was that he NEVER knew what I was going to do in response to it. "Sometimes you parry, sometimes you retreat, sometimes you stand still, sometimes you fleche at me!" Now if only i could just hit him every time he lunges at me all would be good.

Non combativity as a tactic.

I recently, as a coach, had the opportunity to exploit the non-combativity rule to my fencers advantage. Or, I suppose I had the opportunity to get her to exploit it. She was fencing in a DE against another girl who was also a lefty, who had whipped her 5-0 in the pool, and at the very beginning of the but nearly 40 seconds went by with nothing happening. The ref, a relatively inexperienced one, commented after the first touch was scored, "man I wish NC applied in foil, that took forever." I pointed out to him that it did apply to foil and the bout went on. At the first break I told my fencer, (who was ahead by 2 points) to see if she could get him to call NC. The rationale being that the shorter the bout was the less time her opponent would have to stage a comeback. It worked perfectly, about 45 seconds into the bout the ref moves things along to the final period. The other girl looked confused but soldiered on. It became clear to me that she didn't know what NC was and had no idea what had just happened. A few points later with my fencer still up by 2 the ref call NC again and moves to the final minute. (note: at this point I wouldn't have called NC. while technically more that 15 seconds had gone by without blade contact there was a lot real positional action taking place, but that is letter of law versus spirit of the law and is another discussion) The ref determines priority (my fencer got it)and restarts the bout. the other girl is totally confused and is trying to ask her strip coach what is going on but of course there is no coaching when NC is called so she starts up again. She scores, my fencer scores and she scores again and time runs out. My fencer still being up by one wins. I rather suspect that the next time that girl enters a tournament she will know all about NC. She has a really good coach and he will prevent that from happening again. It was interesting to play the system like this. I realize this is not why NC was implemented but as long as they are going to put stupid rules in the book, people are going to exploit the issues.