http://askfred.net/Results/results.php?tournament_id=26171&highlight_competitor_id=91067&event_id=104339
I did less well this time, compared to recent tournaments; finishing 22nd out of 27. I wasn't feeling on my game too well. A bit spacey, slow. Also there were a lot of good fencers among the 27. Nearly half were As or Bs. And then there were people like Steffen Felt who is a C in epee but mostly fences foil. He came in 2nd. The WWD Division Championship has a special trophy for whoever does best in all three weapons, so a number of people fence all three, like Steffen, and also Iain Valentine, who I fenced in my DE.
I've fenced most of the people who were there, other than Steffen Felt. Iain I'd only fenced once, in practice at SAS. Kevin Mar was there too, who I haven't fenced or seen fencing since Blade Fest 2012. Unfortunately I didn't get to fence him today. My pool was a bunch of familiar people:
My first pool bout was with Joel Howard. It was close. We tied 3-3, then he scored, then I scored, making it 4-4. He got the final point and won 5-4. I did best when he attacked and I did parry-ripostes. My own attacks were less successful.
Second pool was with my other clubmate, Yuly Suvorov. Usually I can at least get a point or two on him, and sometimes even beat him to five points (although not in a tournament...yet). Today though he destroyed me 5-0. Three times I attacked and he parried and scored on the riposte. One or two of those attacks were into his powerful 4, which I should know not to do. Twice he attacked and scored. Once with a lovely 8 opposition, nice and small. I counterattacked but his opposition pushed my blade aside just enough to make me miss—my point couldn't have been more than an inch from his chest. Another time he attacked more or less straight in. I had lost focus a bit and he wasted no time taking advantage. Afterwards he said he was doing a lot in 8, and that was "not something you usually let me do". He also said he went to a clinic recently which focused on blade takes and he was doing a lot of simple, small, oppositions in 8.
My third bout was with Garrett Armstrong. The first time I fenced him, at SAS, he beat me badly. The second time, also at SAS, he was beating me badly until I started using footwork/distance and fleches, with which I came back to 4-4, but lost the last point. After that I felt like I knew better how to fence him. My fleche into his advance had worked so well last time I began with that tactic this time. But it didn't work as well this time and he popped me with his good prime. I tried a couple more times and he managed to stop me but didn't manage to score on the riposte. I was probably lucky at least one of those times and he just missed. Seeing how my fleche tactic wasn't working too well I changed to something a little more patient, with more feints. I had some success feinting fleches—body feints, or starting the motion of a fleche, or even starting to fleche but stopping suddenly with the distance not fully collapsed. It seemed that these kind of actions could get him to start his prime parry, but since I was not close enough for prime to work he'd parry air and I could attack straight in. I suppose these were second intention attacks, although I wasn't thinking about it that way. I'm not sure how clearly I was thinking at all. Still, I managed to get up 3-1. At that point Garrett began to launch his own attacks more frequently. One worked, making it 3-2. He tried another fleche but I was able to catch his blade and riposte as he fleched by. At 4-2 we had a bit of a simultaneous attack and doubled, so I won 5-3.
My fourth bout was with Matthew Comes. If I remember right we started with a double touch, me doing a prime riposte. He said "nice double". Then he got me just barely on the knee. I knew to use extra distance with him, but apparently not quite enough. His tip actually just touched the wrinkle of my fencing pants just above the knee, which was sticking out an inch or so. Sheesh. Then, although I knew to watch out for toe touch attempts, he got me with one. I learned a little though—he got it right off the line. He's very good with tempo changes and lulling people into fencing at his tempo—then he'll suddenly change from a slow to a fast tempo. I knew that and was ready for it in general, but wasn't ready for it right off the line the way he did it. He was on guard in a relaxed way, then the ref called "fence" and he took a slow calm step forward and I did the same. Then he suddenly went for the toe and hit. That calm coming off the line tricked me. So he was up 3-1. The next point was annoying and stupid of me. We were fencing for a bit, had a little exchange, then he dropped his point to my knee or toe and I was convinced it hit. Perhaps there was a beep on a neighboring strip. Whatever, I thought argh, he got me again, and stopped fencing. It took him a moment to realize, and he had retreated after the exchange. But as I slowly looked up at the scoring machine he leapt forward and popped me on the chest. Ugh, I felt like an idiot! Perhaps out of anger and frustration I managed to get the next point, pegging him on the arm while he was doing some blade waving. Still, that only made it 4-2. Annoyed still, I fleched with a strong beat, hoping his French grip epee would go way out of line. It did, but he made one of his signature half-behind-the-back flexi-ripostes and hit my shoulder. A frustrating bout, but I think I learned a little more about his style and how to read it, especially his timing and tempo changes, which seem key. Better, I saw a number of things I want to work on myself, especially these tempo changes and lulling opponents into certain tempos.
Next up, Scott Phillips, who I've always had trouble with. The last time, at the Battle in Seattle I think, he destroyed me, mostly with fleches. Beforehand Joel said Scott is a very "clean" fencer and that it's best to fence him "cleanly". I managed the first point by catching him with a 7 parry. Then we doubled, 2-1. After that, well, I kept trying to catch him in 7 again. Or at least I kept making circle 6 motions. According to Joel he caught on to this and took advantage, evading my blade and scoring the rest of the way to 5-2. In the final point I felt like I had spaced out. My focus today was certainly not what it could have been.
My final pool bout was against Andrew Lee, who I've fenced several times in recent months. The last two times we fenced I used an aggressive tactic, mainly meant to prevent him from fleching. It did prevent him from fleching, but also pushed distance too much, allowing him to hit with rather direct attacks. This time I was more than ready to abandon that tactic and instead try a more patient game with wider distance. Russ even said as I connected up not to push too hard. I was like, "oh yea, I learned that lesson last time!" I was ready to respond to his fleches with prime parries, which I thought might work. But, like other times, when he did fleche my instinct kicked in and I did not try prime. Still I managed to catch one or two. Mostly we played a very patient game, both searching for openings. I mostly bounced in and out of medium to long distance, ready to retreat and counterattack. From time to time I launched attacks, but tried not not overcommit. He reacted by quickly retreating and a couple times I continued my somewhat cautious attack until we were at his end of the strip. I think once I made a fully committed attack, perhaps a fleche, and got hit with a nice riposte. After that I kept things more controlled. I tried a variety of half-lunges, hoping for a reaction I could renew into. I tried feints of many kinds, but he didn't bite, or made retreating counterattacks. Eventually we got to 4-3, Andrew in the lead. Needing to score two singles I became even more cautious. Luckily for me Joel was watching and at one point called out "ten seconds!" I had not realized the time was almost up. And I was down a point. So I began advancing more aggressively, while still trying to not overcommit. He retreated, clearly trying to kill time. After a few seconds of that I accelerated into a fleche. To my surprise, the action being somewhat reckless, I scored. So it was 4-4 with four seconds remaining.
It wasn't until much later, when I was at home telling the story, that I realized at that point I could have let time expire. Since we were tied the bout would have gone into overtime—sudden death overtime I think. Certainly it would have been wise to do that rather than launch a last second all out attack. But in the bout itself...well, like I said I was feeling spacey and it didn't occur to me that with the score tied I could let time run out. For some reason I assumed I had to score in four seconds or lose. So when the ref called "fence" I made some very rapid advances, while Andrew retreated. Then I made what was probably an awkward and ugly fleche. We had a quick blade exchange and as I ran by off strip I had no idea if either of us had hit. Looking back I saw that I had scored a single light, with one second on the clock. I won, 5-4, beating Andrew for the first time ever. I was elated and a little surprised at having scored twice with two rather desperate attacks with seconds left. It was only hours later that I realized the second attack was actually a dumb and unnecessary thing to have tried. On the other hand, maybe that helped make it work. Perhaps Andrew assumed I would let time run out and was not really ready for my all out last second fleche. Maybe being stupid actually helped me there, heh. Or maybe I was just very lucky. It was certainly an ugly attack.
So, with that inglorious end I came out of the pool with two wins and four losses. My wins were 5-4 and 5-3, while my losses were 5-0, 5-2, 5-3, and 5-4. So my indicator was not great: -8. Still, out of seven fencers I came in 5th. Joel and Garrett each won just one bout—Joel beat me and Garrett beat Joel.
So I was the 21st seed and thus paired with the 12th seed, who turned out to be Iain Valentine. He's a very good foil fencer. I've rarely seen him fence epee. One night not long ago he was doing epee at SAS and I got the chance to fence him to 10 points, if I remember right. To both of our surprises, I think, I beat him 10-1, with what felt like ease. Well, that night was not this day, and he beat me with relative ease, 15-7. On the plus side, I felt like I was mostly "doing the right things". We had a whole bunch of exchanges where I almost scored but just missed, or my tip was flat, or just a little off. Granted, he did nail me with a few very nice attacks. A few times I thought I had hit and at least made a double, only to see his single light on, which got a bit frustrating. One of these times I had the ref check my epee but it was fine. A few points later I made a more obvious hit that didn't score and asked for another check. Nothing—the epee was dead. Maybe I had lost some points earlier to a dying epee. Or maybe not. It seemed like a few at least might have been lost. By then the score was 5-13, so it was looking quite bad. And even if some hits of mine had been lost I would probably still have been down a good bit.
So I changed epees and faced a question. My LP epee had failed when I was warming up with Aaron Page. We were about done anyway when suddenly the LP was dead. Recently it has been failing the shim test a lot. I'd twist the contact spring back in enough to pass shims, only to have it failing again after a bit of fencing. So last night I changed the tip to one with a tighter contact spring. At first it was too short and not registering, so I stretched it out a little until it seemed good and was passing shims. However, after warming up with Aaron it was again not registering. Probably the spring got smooshed back. But with pools about to start I didn't want to fiddle with it. Instead I fenced with my cheap-but-stiff Absolute epee. So when that one failed in my DE with Iain I had to pick between my cheap-and-rather-whippy Blue Gauntlet blade or my Vniti. I had decided not long ago the Vniti should be a last resort epee, but when faced with it or the Blue Gauntlet epee I decided on the Vniti.
I plugged in and tested the Vniti and it was also dead! I had tested it before taking it to the ref in case it failed, which would otherwise be a red card. When it did fail I paused, ready to go get my last epee. But the ref saw and came over, suggesting it might be my body cord. We tested the cord on my bell guard and nothing, indicating it probably was the body cord. I was ready to get my spare but the ref did a final check to see if it was the strip cord. When he was doing that he noticed my body cord's connection to the strip cord was "very loose", and we quickly determined that that was the issue. He said "I fix it". He got a little screwdriver and used it to pull the "ribs" of the body cord prongs out a bit—they were quite flat. Then it fit more snuggly and worked fine. Another armory lesson learned. He offered me my first epee back but I said I was fine. The score was 13-5 after all, and I had already been thinking I might try some flicks, since the Vniti is whippy. Maybe that would change things up.
We started fencing again. Right off the bat I tried a flick to Iain's forearm. It worked like a charm, ringing over his bell guard and feeling like a very nice flick. Then as he attacked in a somewhat foil-like way I managed to peg the underside of his hand. That one also felt very nice. A very solid and direct hand hit, with my blade bending quite a lot, feeling like the Vniti it is. So two nice touches there, but still not much hope at 13-7. Iain got the next two and won, 15-7.
So that was it for me. In other DE bouts there were some close ones. In the table of 32 Zach DeWitt lost to Andrew Lee 15-14. Very close, and I think Zach had been up a couple points near the end. John Comes beat Aaron Page 15-14.
In the table of 16 Iain Valentine faced Dmitry Bokhanevich, who had seeded 5th in the pools. I knew I would have extreme trouble with Dmitry and I figured Iain probably would too. They fenced an extremely close bout, tied off and on all the way to 14-14. Iain got the last point with a desperate and somewhat awkward infighting jump with a foil-like prime parry to the chest. Iain scored a few times with those "foil-like" primes. Joel called them "reverse primes" and we debating a bit whether that's the right thing to call them. I argued they were not "reverse", just rather extremely angled. When Joel asked Iain he said, thinking about the final touch, "they are called 'oh god I've got to do something or I'll get hit and it doesn't matter what it is!'" Ah yes, those.
Also in the table of 16 Cameron Brown beat Charlie Muñoz 15-11. It was quite close for a while. Charlie had some very nice attacks. Unfortunately on several of them he had an excellent chance to score but simply missed.
In the final 8 Steffen Felt took out Iain Valentine, 15-13. They are both normally foil fencers but were both fencing very good epee. I took video of that bout, below. In the semis Steffen Felt beat Yuly 15-12, which was impressive. Hans Engel beat Jay Slater 15-10. I left before the final bout. It turned out Hans beat Steffen 15-13.
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