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.

Not fencing

This post has nothing to do with fencing but instead relates to the other sport by which I make my living. Bicycles.

We recently had a guy bring a Walmart purchased Schwinn into the shop to get a new seat and some add ons. He decided to have us tune it up too since (as usual) the gears were really not adjusted right coming out of Wally World. When I first looked at it I was shocked. It had actual real components on it. I mean the shifters and the rear derailleur were the same as on an entry level Trek Mountain Bike. This of course worried me a bit because quality is the one thing that keeps us going over the horde of Wal-Mart bicycles. The bike had also been assembled correctly, not the oh so common twisted cables, hubs tightened into bearing crushing rigidity, pedals loose or anything. Even the fork was on right. (You would be surprised how often the guys at the Dept store put those on backwards.)
My fear of a qualitative assault on our sales ebbed as I looked further at the bike those, the wheels are still cheap. The Bottom Bracket was nice 1980 technology without 80's quality, and the front derailleur was a piece of excrementa guaranteed to deprive anyone using it of full enjoyment.
So Schwinn has made some improvements, but I still wouldn't recommend this bike to anyone.

A good practice

That is what I had on Tuesday. A good practice. I fenced well, i moved reasonably well. (not really well, but better) The moves were coming in that day and working. It is taking awhile but I am slowly getting my stuff back together. I am fencing foil pretty much exclusively at practice right now. That doesn't bother me, practicing foil is good for epee, it works all of the basic skills. I am pleased with how things are working now. The only downside is that we don't get that many practices. Lots of holidays now that cause us to miss practice.

But better some practice than no practice.

Tournamnet Report: The Bent Blade

This was a very small tournament. Two events, Div II foil and div II epee. Both of them only had seven entries. I only fenced in the epee. But I did arrive in time to see the end of the foil DE's. I saw wily veteran Earl Shapiro fall to the taller, stronger Frank Trowbridge and, and Warner Robbins two you foilist, Clinton Harrison, (who thinking about it now isn't all that young) and Jared Rimmer fight it out. Clinton started the bout out with a blade that just wasn't right. At the first break he was behind something like 8-4 and I had seen at least 5 hits where his blade and bent up against Jared. but oh well. He finally switched blades and came roaring back to take the lead. But in the end, Jared kept his head and fought off Clinton's return and won the bout to enter the finals against Frank. Which he won and Earned his long due E.

then epee started. There were 2 veteran Cs, one E and 4 Us in the event. I started off real slow. I really felt like I was fencing in slow motion, which considering the 15 pounds I put on over the summer, I am. but I did manage to win most of my bouts. Lost to the E from FSA and one of the beginners. Thankfully by the DE's I had warmed up enough that I was fencing with something of a brain. MY first De was pretty much a walkover. Scored most of my points with the same action and I think I scored all of them hitting the same target area. (right shoulder/upper arm) Second DE I fenced Jared. He was much more energetic than my first opponent had been and made me work a bit more but I won without any problems. the final, as it should have been was the two C's. Me vs Frank. Franks scored a nice toe shot at one point and kept the fight fairly close but I really felt I had the game in hand for the whole bout. I did notice that I am slow reacting the fleche. Which is bad considering Frank doesn't have a real fast fleche so I will need to pick that up before I fence the fast and the young.

Next event will probably be GSU's Halloween open.

And while I may have been fencing with SFC next to my name (which really feels and sounds strange to me still) I was wearing a GASOU T-shirt and warm up jacket.

Practice?

I have been fencing more foil lately than I have in years. Unfortunately, it is fencing, not practice. The new club I have ended up at, doesn't really believe in PRACTICE. They like to fence, a very fun club. They set up the electric strips, and everyone waits in line to fence two bouts then it is back in line to wait till your turn rolls back around again. I have tried, with limited success to get people to drill with me between bouts. Most people prefer to sit and chat with one another. the bad part of this of course is that what I REALLY NEED now in foil is boring repetitive drills, forcing me to concentrate on keeping my hand from turning to far, making my actions smaller, all the basic stuff.
What I have been doing, is footwork and lunges while I am waiting. Which is of course something else I really need. So all is far from lost. :)

I wonder if the others there that I don't know well think I am antisocial for not sitting around and chatting?

Lessons in Savannah

I have been giving some lessons down in Savannah this summer. I went down there the other day and found that only 5 people showed up, They wanted to fence but no one knew how to ref. So they asked me to do it. I decided that if I was going to do that I was going to make it a learning experience for everyone. So I reffed, and took time to explain the calls, critique the fencers, correct their actions, caching things you know. I also took time to teach them how to ref. I felt it was a very productive, if a bit non profitable, day of lessons. When we left, one of the guys there commented to me that he know felt he knew not only how to lunge but when.
I did take the time to actually give one real lesson during the evening too.

Tournament Report

The Pirate Olympics

53 fencers, A2 event.

A very bottom heavy A2 event. Over half of the fencers were Us and many of them were pretty much novices. But it was still a real fun tournament. They also held a team event and a one touch single elimination event. The main event ran very smoothly. The team and one touch had some jitters but that is to be expected. Although three of us went, we did not field a team. Tom hurt his hand during the event and wanted to take his wife out to eat, and we didn't rally someone else. If I had tried I could have gotten onto another team but when they made the final announcement for close of team registration I was reffing a quarter final bout I think.

Over all I did well. I ended up in 16th. Went three and two in a six man pool. which sounds better than it was. I could nitpick myself here because I really didn't fence that well in most of my bouts. but I won't. I'll be happy with what went well.
I fenced a DE bout with Charles Cory who, like most people I have coached, is always difficult for me. Charles had an awesome pool. he went 5 and 1 including taking Bruce Vail to overtime. So he had a much higher seed than I. He jumped out ahead of me at first with his usual long looping lefty counterattacks to my outside arm. I was able to neutralize his counters with a timing change taking advantage of a mistake he was making. that got me back on top before he fixed his mistake. The I spent the rest of the bout literally arguing with myself about trying the move again.
But I did convince myself to obey the rules and not go back to something that had stopped working. Then to finish off the bout I finally clicked on to how to stop the looping outside counters cold. I finally popped the correct parry for a second intention hit. Things went well. I was then eliminated by David Hueske (he got me last year at this event too) Hueske went on the final four and renewed his B.

I heard a fencer commenting that Miles Bengston was the best fencer a the event by far. He said, "no offense to Bruse, Bruce is really good, but Miles has got this" Well, the final score fothe first place bout was Vail 15 Bengston 3. Although Bruce did comment to me afterwords that Miles was "Going to be really scary in a couple of years"

Over all it was a very nice event. Too bad our more novice epeeists didn't make it.

Surprising

Looking at the new features of 14meters.com I discovered that over the last 5 years or so the two people I have fenced against most in competition are Charles Cory and Patricia Wilkins at 9 times. Not quite sure how that worked out. Tripp Hagan, Rob Mahling, Andrew Quattrociocchi, and Demetris McNelly are all tied for second at 8.

This is a really interesting site.

ugh

I have been reminded with the casual cruelty of reality that it is so much easier to stay in shape than it is to get in shape.

Some data

IN 2006 at the Geoff Elder, we had 21 fencers in the open epee and it was a B1 event. there were 6 fencers from the Atlanta area. (7 if you count Ben Mitchel but he was student here at the time I believe)3 from Savannah, 2 from Warner Robbins, 4 from South Carolina, and 6 from GASOU. (counting Ben.)

In the open foil we had 16 fencer and it was a C1. 10 of those were from GASOU. 1 from Florida, 1 from South Carolina, 3 from Atlanta and 1 from Warner Robbins.

Saber actually had 18 fencers and wad a D1. 4 GASOU, 3 South Carolina, 4 Savannah, 4 Atlanta, 1 Augusta, 1 Warner Robbins, and 1 from California.

Now compare to this year,

Open epee, 39 fencers, A1 event. Atlanta 9 fencers, GASOU 6 fencers, North Carolina 1 fencer.(although he may be in school in Atlanta) Savannah 5 fencers, Warner Robbins 4 fencers, South Carolina 7 fencers, Macon 1 fencer, Tennessee 2 fencers, Florida 2 fencers.

Open foil had 20 fencers and was a B1. GASOU 9 fencers, Florida 5 fencers, Warner Robbins/Wesleyan 3 fencers, Atlanta area, 1 fencers, Savannah 1 fencer, Tennessee 1 fencers.

Saber of course was a total bust.

IN 2008 we had 20 in the epee, 15 in the foil and 15 in the saber.

2009 43 in the epee, 47 in the foil, 15 in the saber.

2010 36 in epee, 39 in foil, and 10 in saber.

A couple of good years

1995 and 1996. I really had a good run during those years. It is hard to get real results from that time period because there was no such record keeper as askfred. But I took a look at my trophy shelf. I won the Geoff Elder in 95, I won the Sword in the Stone in 96, if I recall correctly, I won the MUGFEST at UGA. I also took 6th in the Southeast Sectional Championships. (All epee of course) I also won some tournament at Georgia Tech in 96 where I earned my first C. And I can't recall where but I remember I re earned that C the next week. I guess I should hunt through the medals and see if there was anything else Of interest in that time period. Maybe later.

Stats

I have been looking over the Online fencing journal at 14meters.com It shows some interesting stuff.

The win percentages alone are interesting. Since 2005, which is when I first started showing up on askfred, I have a 56.7 win percentage in epee bouts. (truth in advertising here, data for 05 and probably 06 is not complete, Fred was not widely used in this area at that time.) According to the data from Fred, in the 05-06 season I had a 60.9 % win ratio. Nice. In 06-07 it drops to 57.9, 07-08 it goes back up to 62.2, 08-09 it goes up again to 64.8, 09-10 it crashes to 42.7. Thus far in the 10-11 season my percentage is 25. Ugh.

There is a lot more data to mined from this stuff. I encourage you to give it a shot.

Wow

I knew I had fallen out of the competitive spirit but hadn't really realized how far until this past weekend. There was a NAC in Atlanta and I not only didn't go, I actually forgot about it. Usually I would have headed up there if not to fence, then to at least watch, visit the vendors, observe the refs, just to be part of the game. And I didn't. I just plain forgot about it. The club could have fielded an epee team.

Thinking about it, I have competed in ONE tournament this fall. One. In past years I have often got to three events a month.

I wonder if I am sick?

Ok guys, (if anyone reads this) Go to this website

14meters

The online fencing journal is fascinating. Also the referee test is very useful.

Go and check it out.

Rivals

Rivals. Is it a good thing to have a ‘RIVAL” in fencing? Well like so many things the answer is yes, but sometimes no. A personal rival can be a very useful thing to have in fencing. It is good to have someone out there when at the end of the tournament you can say, “Well, I didn’t win but at least I beat you.” In a friendly way that is. What makes a good rival? Well he (or she) should be at about your level of fencing. IF you are picking one, try to find someone that is a bit better than you so you have something to work for. The rival should be at a close enough level that you can either beat him periodically or at least come real close most of the time. You can’t have a good rivalry with someone who beats you silly every time you fence or that you pound on. The rival should also be at a club close enough to you that you get to fence him fairly regularly. To really be a productive rivalry, you should actually like the person enough to sit down and talk to them or go out and eat after the tournament. Lastly, your rival should also be interested in having you as a rival. It is pretty pointless to drive yourself to beat someone who couldn’t care less about you.

Semi humorous tale here. I had a rival like that once. I didn’t know it until several years later. There was a fellow in the club who it seems to have developed an urge to defeat me in every way. If I said something in club about the rules, he would go home and look it up to try and prove me wrong. He would watch me fence and take notes on what I did to try and beat me later. I found out about this several years after the fact when his ex girlfriend was talking to me about the “good old days”. Needless to say I was surprised because he had never registered on my radar as that big a deal. Something on an annoying personality but and as not bad fencer, but I never felt the need to really push myself to beat him. This is a failed rivalry.

To have a good rivalry both of you have to buy into the game. Always bring a bit extra to the bouts against that rival. Always care about winning those bouts. Strive for it. But never get pissy about it if you lose. Ina good rivalry you will lose periodically. That is what keeps it exciting.

Now one question remains. Should your rival be in your club or out? Serious rivalries should be out. Where you fence each other pretty much only at tournaments when the shit is serious. But inner club rivalries can be a lot of fun. It adds a bit of excitement to practice when you can call someone out at the end of practice for a full on tournament intensity bout.

So, when you go to tournaments, start looking for someone who is fun to fence, and then start setting it up. YOU can’t just go up and say, Hey, want to be my rival? It doesn’t really work. But if you talk to him before and after every tournament you are in together. Start dropping lines like “Ah, you again, this will be fun!” Pretty soon they will start to play along and presto, you have a friendship and a rivalry. Or they just look at you like you are weird. In which case you start over with someone else.

Bad rivalries. Yes, there certainly can be bad rivalries. If for example when you use that line, “I didn’t win but at least I beat you.” You aren’t being funny but are being an asshole that is a sign that you are taking this whole thing wrong. Your rival should be a friend. If you actually dislike him then you are doing something entirely different. Fencing should be fun. If you are generating hostility than things aren’t working right and you probably need to rethink your approach to the game.

Just out of curiosity, is anyone but Amanda actually reading this thing?

Starting fencing

So, I am sure that most beginning fencers ask themselves at some point, “Why can’t we just fence instead of doing all this STUFF?” Well, frankly, at some clubs you can. These clubs tend be either the REALLY good clubs, or the REALLY bad ones. For example, I have been told by members of the club that when a beginner walks into Nellya he or she is dressed out and told to go fence. One of the mid range fencers there takes him over to a strip and they start to fence. This works because there is such an abundance of talent available that the Coach, excuse me, Maestro, is absolutely confident that The beginner will be steered away from any bad habits and, if he gets those habits he is confident that he and his coaching staff can break the beginner of them. Judging from the fencers that come out of Nellya, it seems to work for them. On the other end of the spectrum, some small clubs, generally those without any real coaching at all when the get a beginner tend to dress the fellow up and let him learn from osmosis and he fences the others in the club. This tends to turn out pretty scary fencers. Not scary because they are good but scary because they do really wild and crazy shit on the strip. If the beginner is athletic and coordinated he can often get good enough to earn at least a D, sometimes a C (in foil) or even better in Epee if he is really fast too. But once he hits the point where his wild and crazy stops intimidating his opponents, he stops winning. And unfortunately, once those wild and crazy things get embedded in a fencers psyche it is VERY hard to get them back out. Bad habits are real easy to pick up and REALLY hard to lose. It can be done if there is a good coach available and the fencer has a lot of time and desire to change. But it is hard and time consuming.

Now, in my case I will not let someone “Just fence.” In fact I will get annoyed with you if you start to do it on your own. In our club I unfortunately do have the time to give every fencer the individual attention needed to overcome those bad habits picked up by early bouting. And there are not (yet) a strong enough cadre of senior fencers back fill the time. And in a college club we will rarely get a lot of members who can do that much because about the time you get good at it you graduate and leave.

So the best bet to become a competent fencer in the situation we are in is to learn all the basics first and then start to put them together. I know it isn’t as fun, but it is a system that works for us.

How it used to be.

Many fencers today do not realize that this tournament format we use now is; A. Not the way if has always been done, of B. Not the only way you are allowed to do it even now.

When I started fencing, and for many years after that, the standard format for tournaments was pools. A round, of pools, followed by another round of pools, followed by another round of pools. In each round the a percentage of the fencers were dropped. For example, if you started an event with 30 fencers the first round would be either six pools of five, or five pools of six. You were required to advance at least 50% from each round so in either case the top three from each pool (probably) would advance to the second round. ( I say probably because they could decide to advance 4 people from each pool if they wished, or even 5 from the pools of six although that would be pretty extreme.) Who advanced was determined by results of the pool. Victories of course were counted first, than indicators, then fewer touches received, then touches scored.
(At the time it was considered more important to have not been hit than it was to hit.) (To really confuse you, when I started fencing, scores were not kept by how many times you hit your opponent, but by how many times you got hit. First person to five lost. But we will leave that out of the explanation for now)
Fencers in those days kept a close eye on their indicators. I recall sitting by the strip cheering for a guy to score at least three points but not win so that I would advance due to indicators over his opponent. Once you figured out how things worked you paid attention to every point.

So in our thirty person event, we’ll say there were five pools of six, three advance. So the second round will have three pools of five. If you advanced three from this round you would have nine which is awkward, so you would probably advance four people into two pools of six into a final of six. At the end of the day the person with the best record in the final pool wins. First place though could not be decided by indicators, only by victories, so if there were a tie in victories the two (or three, or four) fencers who were tied would have to fence off for the victory. (it was conceivable that if there was a five person pool they could each win two bouts and have to fence the pool over in the barrage for first place) When I said “at the end of the day” I meant it. Events like this took a L O N G time to fence. There were events that would start early in the morning, eight to ten AM, and end early in the morning, one to two AM. Think you are tired now when you make the finals? Wait until you have been fencing for twelve hours and you are in your fifth pool and each pool has been harder than the one before it. Conditioning was an issue. But, if you were good enough, you got a LOT more fencing for your money.

This format is still acceptable. We could hold tournaments doing it now. But people are scared of the time factor. But it is still practical for a smaller event, say less than thirty fencers. It should be used as it will give especially the top fencers more quality bouts. Instead of burning through some cannon fodder before getting a hard bout in the round of eight, or four, when you make the final pool you get to fence five bouts against the top five fencers of the day. Not a bad way to finish off if you ask me.

Things in the head....

I have never seen a Twilight movie. Never really been interested. I read the first book back when it came out after I read an interview with the author where she told about how she wrote it from a dream she had. I thought the book was ok but nothing to get really excited about. But as I see the previews for this latest movie I confess I am tempted. (Trust me folks, this will work its way around to fencing, just be patient.) The first reason I am tempted is because the werewolves are just too cool looking. I know they probably show all the really good scenes in the trailer and the rest blows but damn, they just look cool. I thought that when I saw the previews for the last movie too but there are more cool wolf scenes in this one. (Can anyone explain why the chick didn’t go for the werewolf instead of the effeminate whiny rich kid vampire? Oh wait, tormented, rich and brooding, that seems to be the thing ever since Buffy came out, got it.) The other reason I am tempted to see this is because in these previews I keep getting glimpses of a red headed vampire. And here is where Stephanie Meyers and I sort of karmicly come together. You see many many, years ago I had a dream that featured a red headed female vampire. Now understand this was way before the current vampire craze got started. This was in the late 80s or early 90s. But in my dream, this red headed vampire showed up and wanted to learn to fence. She always showed up late or arranged lessons after dark. I recall being really frustrated in the dream that she would never go to tournaments. Somehow I eventually figured out that she was a vampire and in the dream I remember that moment. The light comes on in my head so to speak and I grab a wooden chair and smash it on the floor so I have one leg that is long and comes to a sharp point and assume an en guarde position and say something really stupid like “Just try it, I can hit your heart with a lunge.” (My dreams obviously need better dialogue coaches) The vampire just laughs and says “If I wanted to kill you I could have done it ages ago. But then I wouldn’t have a fencing coach.” So we worked it out, she kept taking lessons and no one (that I knew at least) got bitten. There was one point in the dream where she commented that even if she could find a night time tournament she probably wouldn’t go because she didn’t think it would be fair fencing humans when she had the extra physical capabilities of a vampire. As I recall I said something like “Don’t be ridiculous, some people have better and faster reflexes too, fence with what you have.” At any rate, the redhead in the Twilight previews looks like the one in my long ago dream. (See, it got around to fencing)

I have of course had other fencing dreams. None of me winning major events, or becoming a champion or anything of the sort. In fact, usually the main thrust of the dream is something else and the fencing is going on sort of in the back ground. These dreams reflect my background in fencing too in that they never seem to take place in large fancy salles or arenas. Instead they are almost always in crowded school gyms or dimly lit decrepit clubs. I n one dream I recall the building was flooded, and the fencers had all piled their equipment bags around the strips to form dikes. The strips were wet but off the strip you were standing in three or four inches of cold water. I recall some discussion about the possibility of being electrocuted by the scoring equipment if you were fencing in puddles. So yes folks, I literally do fence in my sleep too.

So, do any of you have fencing dreams?

Well, I went to a tournament yesterday, didn't do particularly well. It doesn't help that on Thursday I ran two miles for the first time in 18 odd months and my legs were totally dead. I went 3 and 2 in the pools which isn't so bad (although I was fencing a lot of relative beginners so I should have done better) then I tanked my first DE to a pretty good fencer who was suffering from tendinitis so badly that he could barely lift his arm.) but he lifted it enough to beat me 15-14 and go on to take third in the open (and eventually be on the winning team in team event too)

In the team event I finally got my legs back and fenced well. It wasn't a serious event by any means, the young beginners came out with great enthusiasm. I really liked the fact that they did not let themselves get intimidated at all. If something didn't work they would try something else. (including at one point what can best be described as crouching lizard/hopping toad style fencing) Much fun was had by all in the team event.

Other than my personal sucking in the open the only down side to the day came from a young fencer from Canada by way of North Carolina. I have seen him at two tournaments. At both of them he has had a screaming hissy fit involving a great deal of stomping around and cussing (in French) as soon as he loses. The kid isn't a bad fencer but he really needs to learn to chill out a bit.