Almost an E again

http://askfred.net/Results/results.php?tournament_id=24372&highlight_competitor_id=91067&event_id=97551

This was a fun tournament and I did well, but I admit it took a few hours to get over feeling "argh" about coming within 2 points of earning that silly E rating. My DE bout with Adam Chase was mostly tied or with me a point or two ahead, until the end when he pulled a point, then two ahead. And although he's certainly a challenge his style works well for me. That is, he tends to do things that I usually try to get people to do—things conducive to my blade taking tactics. But now that a bunch of hours have passed I'm over that and more enjoying having had a good day fencing. I'd write more but am tired. Started taking notes on individual fencers in a little notebook. Perhaps that will come in handy in the future.

2013 Leon Auriol Open

Well, this was a rough way to start the fencing season. Last year I was able to ease into things with a "U" tournament and the BladeFest vet event before being crushed in the Leon Auriol Open. This year, well, things start right off with being crushed.

During the event I was able to relax and enjoy it, despite being crushed. And I definitely enjoyed and learned from watching and fencing people I don't usually fence. But now, the day after, I feel rather crushed. On the plus side, I went in about as prepared as I could be, kept my mind focused pretty well, and fenced about as well as I can expect of myself in a tournament, especially one that I had to get up at 7:00 AM for.

In tournaments my mind often goes a little blank and my fencing reverts to simpler, uncreative moves. Part of that is because my brain gets hung up on the idea that tournaments "count", which generates an edge of worry. But, during this one, I think I did better than usual avoiding this mind-problem. Beforehand I had worked out a few key things to remind myself with, and even wrote them down and reminded myself during the tournament a few times. They were part tactical, part mindset oriented, and partly inspired from the Leon Paul book "Epée Fencing, A Step-by-Step Guide...", which used the term "mantras" and has a number of useful ideas about mental (and physical) preparation for, and use in tournaments. So my "mantras" were:

• Use the whole strip. A tactical mantra reminding me to use good footwork and lots of forward and backward movement, to play with distance a lot, especially taking time now and then to open distance up quite a lot, to give myself space to refocus and perhaps to frustrate opponent. To alternate being a defensive retreating style and an offensive threatening style. Also a reminder to be patient and retreat to my end of the strip sometimes as a tactic to draw over-eager attacks.
• Lower work, upper relax. A basic fencing tenet I still need to consciously remember. Keep your upper body relaxed, especially your weapon arm, shoulder, wrist, hand, and fingers. I tend to stiffen my shoulder, lock my elbow, and tighten my fingers, resulting in many non-ideal things, like overly large movements made with my wrist or arm rather than my fingers, which exposes my hand and arm to hits. When I think about it I can relax my elbow and fingers, but still am learning how to relax my shoulder, for some reason. The companion point is to work your legs hard: they don't get to relax! The Paul Leon book puts it something like "your legs are donkeys, ignore their braying". Work them hard, keep a strong low stance, etc, etc.
• Enjoy, learn. A mental mantra aimed at reducing worry and anxiety. And a reminder—I love fencing and enjoy it immensely in practice, but in tournaments can easily slip out of the simple enjoyment into a counter-productive worry. I almost always enjoy tournaments after they are over, or in between bouts, and am eager for more. I need to enjoy them while they are happening! I've only managed this better in the last few I've done. I managed it this time and truly enjoyed it, even while being crushed. So that's something. "Learn" goes with "enjoy". Since tournaments almost always involve fencing people I don't usually get to fence there is a lot to learn—both about the styles of these regional fencers, who I am likely to fence again in future tournaments, and about styles of fencing, tactics, etc. Both "enjoy" and "learn" serve to take focus away from "winning". You can enjoy and learn even when being crushed, and I did. There is time to feel crushed and even disappointed later.
• Open eyes. Another term I got from the Paul Leon book. I've slightly modified it for my own use. As a mantra it reminds me to focus on the fencing itself, moment-to-moment. To try and see what the other person is doing and, ideally, respond appropriately. Also as a mental thing, it's a Zen-like reminder to devote my entire self to the fencing as it happens.
• Attack into attack. A tactical thing which may or may not be ideal with every fencer or every attack. In part comes from Sam's talk of attacking into fleches, rather than retreating and trying to parry-riposte as I tend to do. Sam says that this approach may result in double touches, and that if he can get a double out of his opponent's attacks, he should be able to win. Of course he's a much better fencer than me, but I've been trying this approach lately. My instinct is still to retreat and parry fleches (and I did a few times in this tournament). Late in the tournament Sam and Justin Meeham were chatting, and I took part a little and learned a lot. This "attack into attack" notion came up and Justin talked about what he called "counter-fleching", saying the best response to a fleche is to fleche back, which is pretty much what Sam had told me a few weeks ago. Sam said it took some time and effort to be able to do that, and that he had to start with just standing ground and extending against a fleche, then lunging into fleches, before really being able to fleche into fleches. In any case, attacking into attacks, or better yet, preparations for attacks, is something I could do a lot more of.
• Back foot solid. Lately people (Russ most of all) have been telling me that I tend to say up on the ball of my back foot, and that this is okay sometimes but not so much for fleches and general balance (at least for me). So I've been working on consciously putting my back foot solidly down at least part of the time, which goes nicely along with keeping my back hip low and keeping my upper body from twisting too much when fleching and such. So, a basic physical mantra for something I've been working on.
• He's better and will win but... The first words of an anti-anxiety mantra that comes from Johan Harmenberg's book Epee 2.0. It may not be useful for everyone, but it certainly is for me. The full form, meant to tell yourself just before any given bout, is something like: "This person is better than me and will win, but I will try as hard as I can to make it as hard for them as possible." In the case of this tournament I was just in, this mantra was particularly useful since I did not win a single bout!

As mantras these phrases stand for larger concepts, and in my mind I joined some of them together (e.g., "Lower work, upper relax; enjoy!"; "attack into attack; back foot solid"). I think I was able to keep these in mind quite well and fenced the way they suggested. So that's good, right? Now, in hindsight, perhaps I should try to come up with another mantra encouraging creativity and insight, if that is possible. As usual in tournaments I had a hard time adjusting to other fencers' styles. I suppose in pool bouts to 5 points there isn't much time to adjust, although one can usually observe poolmates before fencing them and get a sense. The extent of my being able to do that was little more than noting that three fencers in my pool were left-handed and knowing what their letter rankings were. In direct elimination bouts to 15 points there's more time to see and adjust—and more need to do so.

I had trouble doing seeing and adjusting in my one DE bout, against Dylan French, but did get useful advice from John Varney ("stay to the left edge of the strip") and Russ ("attack into his preparations, straight in, nothing fancy"). Of course my DE bout was against the guy who went on to win 1st 2nd place, so perhaps I should be pleased I managed to score 6 points on him? After getting John's advice, early on, about staying to the left edge of the strip I noticed Dylan also kept close to that edge (the right edge for him, left for me). As I watched Dylan in later bouts I noticed he was very good at flicks and remises to the inside. By keeping close to the left edge, like John suggested, I reduced my inside target to some degree. In later bouts I saw other fencers use an opposite tactic, of keeping to the right edge, thus fencing somewhat diagonally on the strip. Whether that helped or not is hard to say, since Dylan did not lose a single lost only one bout in the whole tournament.

Russ's advice of attacking into Dylan's attacks/preparations, and his making a point of using a straight, direct attack, nothing fancy, came too late to be put to much use. Dylan was up something like 10-3 or 12-4 or so. But as usual with Russ's advice, it was very useful, and I scored a couple of points with it.

Anyway, although I'm somewhat embarrassed by my performance this blog is meant to be merely a record for myself. So here's the link to my results yesterday. This is the first tournament in which I did not win a single bout. Even in last year's Leon Auriol Open I won one pool bout, against John Comes.

http://askfred.net/Results/roundResults.php?seq=1&event_id=93534&highlight_competitor_id=91067

Oh, and I took a few pictures (none turned out great) and videos. I haven't gone through them all yet but did experiment with using iMovie to slow the speed down. The quality isn't great, but here's the slow-motion video clips I made last night. I put them on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pfly/10012990555/ (Jay Slater (right) vs. Dylan French (left))


http://www.flickr.com/photos/pfly/10011987845/  (George Raush (right) vs. Daniel Krogh, I think (left))


http://www.flickr.com/photos/pfly/10011555465/  (Jay Slater (right) vs. Dylan French (left))


http://www.flickr.com/photos/pfly/10011061534/  (Jay Slater (right) vs. Dylan French (left))

Good practice evening, fleche ideas

Had a very fun and "on" evening at fencing practice tonight. Now that it's September more and more people who took the summer off are turning up. I've long had some bad habits with fleching, but Russ showed me a method that I used tonight with a good deal of success:

Half advance or lunge, bring front foot back but keep weight on back foot; if distance and so on is good, fleche. Having weight on back foot seems to help me fleche more *from* the back foot.

Another idea from David (via Leon). From a normal stance swing front foot back so its just in front of the back foot, and with the knee well bent/cocked; from there launch into a fleche off the front foot.

Also, some success using Sam's tactic of doing a slow, not very threatening feint, then another slightly deeper but still slow, to give opponent time to consider what to do if you attack in that line for real, then a very fast feint in the same line but broken off, in order to draw out opponent's planned response--parry? counterattack? etc. Then fleche into that same line with whatever disengage or whatever ought to work against opponent's now-revealed defense.

And here's a fencing video I was watching the other day. It's in German and repeats itself here and there. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be about, other than a bunch of clips of epee practice, some slow motion. All to a techno soundtrack. Ran across it while looking for a video showing a 7-6 bind (septime-sixte). At 30 seconds into this one the student practicing seems to do a couple 7-6 binds. Anyway, I'm not sure why but watching it makes me want to fence.

2013 Subway Washington Games

I never wrote up a report from this tournament? Hmm. Today I was reminded of it because Johannes Klein stopped by SAS to fence and he, by chance, had been my main opponent in the "Subway" tournament back at the end of July.

Subway, the fast food place, hosts a bunch of summer games in the Seattle area, to my surprise. The fencing part of it was at Rain City Fencing Center in Bellevue, and I wouldn't have known it had any connection to the fast food place except for the name and the t-shirts being handed out.

Anyway, several of my fellow SAS fencers were there. It seemed like one of us might end up doing pretty well, but we all ended up losing our first DEs—except John Varney, of course. He came in 5th. But among us lower ranked fencers—me, Jeramy, Charlie, Joel, Jim—it was a little bitter how we all got knocked out so quickly. Maybe that's why I didn't write up a report.

Still. My results: http://askfred.net/Results/roundResults.php?seq=1&event_id=91687&highlight_competitor_id=91067

My pool started off not good, but improved nicely. Clubmates within a pool always fence each other first, so I had to start off fencing John Varney. Yikes. I lost 5-0. Then, well I forget the exact order, but I think I fenced Jim Henderson next. I've beaten him before, and he's beaten me. This time he whooped me, 5-2. Next up was John Comes, who I've also beaten before, and who has beaten me too. Things turned around at this point, and I beat him 5-2. I was able to catch a few of his fleches with good parries and landed ripostes. Felt good, and helped dispelled the doom that had begun to set in. Next, I think, was Dylan Meehan, someone I didn't know and who came in last place in our pool. I don't remember it well, but we got to 4-4 and he scored the final, winning 5-4.

Then I was up against Johannes Klein. I had heard a lot about him—he's been fencing around the Seattle area for a long time. He's older, left-handed, and smart. I had watched him beat George once before, and George almost always beats me. So I went in using a mantra I've been using in recent tournaments: "This guy is better than me and will win, but I will make it as hard for him as I can". People had warned me about his fleches, but he wasn't fleching that day. I played a patient game, focusing on distance, trying to gain just that few extra inches, and made several hits to his hand and forearm. To my surprise I won 5-1. Afterward as I walked off the strip to my SAS mates, who were congratulating me, I said, "well, that went better than expected!"

My final pool bout was against Virgillo Cuenca, another fencer I didn't know. Like with Dylan we got to 4-4, but I scored the final touch, winning 5-4. Or perhaps we got to 4-3 and ended with a double, I can't quite recall. Anyway, after the rough start I was pleased with my pool results. I had won three and lost three, and came in 3rd out of 7. Jeramy and Charlie, in different pools, had also won three and lost three. Jim was 2 and 4. Joel 2 and 3 (smaller pool). John Varney, being in a different league than the rest of us, was 5 and 0, taking 1st place in our pool and getting the 1st seed in the DE round.

I got 16th seed. Almost everyone got a bye in the first DE round. In turned out my first DE would be against, yes, Johannes Klein, who was 17th seed. Well! Given how well I did in the pools it seemed I had a decent chance. Then again, I had seen Johannes fence in other DE rounds and adjust his fencing along the way to 15 points. I figured I probably couldn't depend on doing the same thing the whole time. At first we fenced off and on more or less tied. After the first period I was down a couple points. Varney came over and suggested I try using counter-6-prime—a tactic good against lefties I had recently learned. John said he had used it against Johannes with good effect before. But when I tried it not only did I kind of flub it, but it clearly wouldn't have worked even if I had done it better, and he scored. I tried some fleches—trying to let distance close just enough for a rapid fleche to perhaps score. But they didn't work, and he got another 2 or 3 points. Then I reverted to what I had started with—a cautious game and attempts to score hand hits. I managed to come back pretty well, but in the end still lost, 15-13. Had I played the cautious, hand picking game all along, perhaps I would have won. Or perhaps not. I didn't feel too bad. 15-13 against Johannes seemed a fine thing. And in any case, if I had won I would have had to fence John Varney next, so. On the other hand, if I had beaten Johannes and lost to Varney, I might have ended up earning that elusive E rating.

Other SAS folks: Jim (24th seed) fenced Sam Kaardal (9th), from Nevada I think. He did okay but couldn't quite pull it off, losing 15-11. Jeramy (13th seed) fenced Nate Balazs (20th), and it seemed like Jeramy had an excellence chance, but things just didn't work out and he lost 15-6, which left him rather bummed. Joel went up against Jim Henderson, who was having a good day. Joel lost 15-9. And Charlie (15th seed) fenced John Comes (18th). A fairly evenly match pair. I tried to give Charlie some advice, as I've fenced John quite a few times and I don't think Charlie had before. But Charlie's style is quite different from mine, so I'm not sure if my advice helped much. In the end Charlie lost 15-12. So all of us lesser SAS fencers were knocked out, even though we all had had decent chances to win. Alas!

John Varney (1st seed) handily beat Emma Shafer 15-4, then beat Johannes Klein 15-7. Then, however, he went up against this "dark horse" kid from Texas, Jacob (Jake) Sloan. I had warmed up with Jake (a leftie only just old enough to fence "senior" epee—so like 14 or 15?), and chatted with his mom. They were very nice people. I had done fine against Jake when just warming up, but once he was competing he became quite excellent. I hadn't watched him fence much before he fenced John Varney, and was rather amazed to see him beat John 15-9. Like John, Jake had a fairly calm, defensive style. His distance and parry-ripostes were excellent. John's fleches, which usually devastate me, mostly failed against Jake.

In the final 8 the only fencers I knew of were John Varney and Bela Suveg, and they were both knocked out. In the final 4 is was Jake Sloan vs. Justin Meehan—Justin being a very very large man who had been winning his DEs with large margins: 15-6, 15-7. He was friendly and calm, but clearly very good, and so big. Jake wasn't small, but he wasn't big either. He looked dwarfed fencing Justin. And having just seen Justin defeat Paul Englund, an obviously very good fencer, 15-6, I watched this bout closely. And was amazed to see Jake beat Justin 15-8, with an ease similar to how he had beaten Varney. Wow.

The other final 4 bout was a minor upset. Paul Duchow (3rd seed) lost to Dylan French (7th) 14-13. It was very close. So the final bout was Jake Sloan vs. Dylan French. In most tournaments I've seen the final bout involves the top seeded fencer, or at least fencers who seeded in the top 4 or 5. This time it was unusually in that Dylan was 7th seed and Jake was 8th. I was kind of rooting for this Jake kid. It turned out to be a bit of an anti-climatic bout. Both of them fenced very defensively, to the point of having non-combativity called. Near the end Jake was down on points and time was running out. He clearly was not wanting to attack, but had to. He got a few points with time running down. With 4 seconds left the score was 7-8. Jake needed to attack, but he didn't, and lost 7-8. Ah well.

Hardware

Yesterday I finally got around to tweaking my newer epee with the custom-made grip designed by Dragonetti, which I got from Don. It's taken me a while to get it put together in a way that should work. My first attempt, using blades from my other epees failed because the tangs were all too short. Dragonetti's grip is fairly long—too long for the "XL pistol grip" tangs on my other blades. So I got a blade with a French grip tang and used a hacksaw to cut it down a bit. After a couple hacksawings I managed to get the grip securely screwed onto the tang, although I have to use two lock washers or the nut doesn't quite fit. That done I put the rest of it together only to discover that the socket, in its regular place on the left side, totally got in the way of my hand, and I couldn't hold the grip in a reasonable way. The grip's "end prong" is paddle-like and "canted" quite a bit to the left, which puts my whole hand more to the left inside the guard. Plus, when I canted the blade I think I canted a little more than I meant to. So I tried putting the socket in different places and eventually found a spot that works and isn't too weird.

I'm used to regular Visconti grips like this:

Visconti grip

Visconti grip in hand, plugged in

I'm used to "regular" Visconti style grips, with finger grooves and that long straight rear prong, or tail (see pics). I have mixed feelings about the long rear prong. Sometimes it feels good resting against my wrist, almost like a rudder that helps me keep the blade straight and the tip on target. Then again, sometimes the long tail is annoying, like when doing a prime parry.

Dragonetti grip

Dragonetti grip

Dragonetti's grip has finger grooves like a Visconti, which I like, but instead of a long straight "tail" it has a short paddle-like tail, which angles away to the left. It feels to me as if the paddle tail wants to rest on your lower palm, unlike the long Visconti tail that reaches to my wrist. This makes things like prime parry feel much better, and it seems like it might be good for flick and "pop" type attacks. I'm not yet sure what I think about the way it—I'm not even sure how to describe it—the way it changes all the angles in your grip. The way your fingers wrap around it, the way it fits into your palm, like your palm "wraps around it" somehow, rather than the "straight up the wrist" feel of the Visconti. It certainly feels weird switching between the two grips. I have only barely fenced with the Dragonetti grip, so I guess time will tell. I can imagine how it might be wonderful once I get the feel of it.

Dragonetti grip, held and plugged in

Dragonetti grip, held and plugged in

In these pictures you can see how it looks when held with a gloved hand and how the paddle tail fits in the palm. And remember that that paddle angles off quite a bit to the left. You can also see how I moved the socket from a 9:00 position, which was smooshing my fingers, to something more like a 10:00 or 10:30 position (where 12:00 would be "on top", over my thumb). It looks a little tight in these pictures, and it is a little tight, but seems like it should be fine.

Dragonetti grip, held and not plugged in

In this picture you can kind of see how long the "shaft" of the grip is—the straight part within the bell guard. The "shaft" must be about a centimeter longer than a normal Visconti. I have rather big hands, as does Dragonetti, so this extra length may be just the thing. Then again, it might be just a little too long, making it less comfortable to hold. I'm still not sure. It can easily be held in an "illegal" way, with the paddle higher and snugger in your palm, and your index finger held straight along the top of the grip, with your thumb on the side and back beyond the one centimeter from the guard allowed by the rules. I've seen people hold pistol grips that way—it gives an extra centimeter or two of reach and, in skilled hands, seems to help with picks and flicks. To me holding it that way feels something like pommelling a French grip, which is not something I have tried much or feel inclined to try much. Plus, if I hold the Dragonetti grip that way my thumb is definitely more than a centimeter from the guard, and therefore illegal. Not that directors in tournaments actually check or enforce that rule. In any case, if after a while I'm not happy with the longer shaft I may cut it down a little.

Epee tips and tip screws

Anyway, in addition to getting the Dragonetti grip epee set up better I also replaced the tip and tip screws in my Visconti epee. A couple weeks ago its tip came out while fencing and I couldn't find it on the floor. I have several spare tips, so I put one that looked less banged up than the others, only to find that I couldn't get one of the tip screws in tight. I probably overtighten tip screws a lot, and worry that I've stripped the threads on some of my tips. Last week I lost two or three more screws from this tip with the possibily stripped threads. Looked through the tips I had (see picture) and found one that seemed not too badly stripped. Then I remembered I had bought some loctite a while ago and put some on the screws before I screws them into the tip, hoping that that will help them stay in.

Epee tip screws are tiny!

Assembled epee tip showing screws destined to fall out

The tip screws are really small, and in my attempt to get just a tiny dab of loctite on just the threads I ended up getting loctite all over everything. I worried a little that the loctite might prevent the tip from depressing at all, or make it sticky. But, hooray, it seemed to work fine today. [later note: this was a bad idea, the loctite made the whole tip stick badly, I had to take them all apart and wash everything in acetone]

Don's ingenious washer

While I was taking pictures of these two epees I thought I would get one showing "Don's washer". This is a useful thing. Normally when putting together an epee you put the wires through the bell guard and socket, then "out" from the base of the grip via a small slot. This system works, but there's a million ways you can accidentally smoosh the wires and cause a short. Don gave me one of his washers and explained how he made them. Basically its a relatively wide washer with a small hole. He cuts a little slot from the hole to the edge, for the wires to run through. He also, somehow, makes the washer's round hole into a square one so it fits on the tang. In the picture above (my Visconti epee) the wires go through the hole in the bell guard, then immediately slot through the washer's groove. I put the pad over that and the socket over the pad, then put the grip on. You could put the socket on with the pad over it too, but I wanted the pad under the socket. Anyway, I've come to really like this washer idea.

My toolkit so far

Key tools (mostly)

Finally, just for fun, here's a couple of pictures of my small but ever-growing toolkit. The second picture shows the main tools out. From left to right: magnet (bottom corner and used to keep the tiny screwdriver tips magnetized); two tiny screwdrivers, neither of which seems quite right for epee tip screws; allen wrench for grips; a little triangular file, mostly for cleaning out blade grooves when rewiring; shim tool for tip testing; needlenose pliers; loctite; superglue (runny, not gel!); a bigger screwdriver for socket wiring; a couple smaller screwdrivers for no particular reason; foreceps, which sometimes come in handy when wiring sockets.

Not shown but very useful: a scouring pad for cleaning rusty blades; a simple epee circuit tester box; and a wrench with a "ring" at one end, for canting blades. Things I'd like to get someday: a small vise and a basic dremel/rotary tool. Oh and some more PVC pipe for scabbards; new hacksaw blades; and a metal pipe (or thick/strong PVC pipe) long enough to hold an epee blade and with secure end caps—to use for cleaning blades of old wire and superglue by putting the blade in the pipe, filling with acetone, sealing, and leaving overnight. I tried that once and it did a great job of getting old superglue off, but the pipe was thin PVC and kind of melted. Oops.

Seatle International Veteran's Cup

Report on today's tournament, Seatle International Veteran's Cup, Men's Epee.

http://askfred.net/Results/results.php?tournament_id=20737&highlight_competitor_id=91067&event_id=85305

During the DEs. I'm just off the left edge here, about to fence the guy in the black headband, Jonathan Jefferies.

I came in 19th out of 34, which is better than I expected given all the great fencers.
My pre-tournament seeding (based on letter ranks and point standings): 30 out of 34(or about 22% from the bottom, if that makes sense).

My seeding after pools, for DE: 18 out of 34 (47% from bottom). Not bad.

In the pools I won 3, lost 3; scored 23 touches, received 24 touches (indicator of -1, and came in 4th place out of 7). This made my DE seed just one above Aaron Page and one below Mark Blom. All three of us won 3 and lost 3 and had indicators of -1. We differed only in touches scored and received (TS/TR): Aaron 22/23, me 23/24, Mark, 24/25. Apparently that is how they determine seeding when victory percentage and indicators are tied. There's some mechanism for dealing with total ties, but it hasn't happened to me yet.

Since I lost my first DE my experience was mainly that of the pools, which I enjoyed a lot and feel like I learned from—fencing mostly people I didn't know (excepting Don, and Michael Chin, who I've only fenced a couple times). Results, in the order I fenced, if I remember right:


Fencer V/D Score Fencer's V/TS/TR/Ind/Pl
Chin, Michael D 3-5 4 26/21 5 2
Penner, Don V 5-3 0 17/30 -13 4
Ameli, Sean D 1-5 6 30/14 16 1
Lipp, Robert D 3-5 4 24/21 3 3
Leonardini, Barry  V 5-2 1 20/27 -7 6
Baldwin, Bob V 5-4 3 24/27 -3 5


Details:
Michael Chin (a "B") is strong and fast, as I knew from before. Usually a foilist, he unfortunately avoided displayed foil habits that are bad in epee. I remember a practice bout with him once where he did a lot of foil-type "mistakes" and I hit him in the arm a lot. Alas, he's learned!

Don I know quite well from practice fencing. He's over 70, very experienced and has taught me a lot. So much I knew how to avoid his tricks and sneak through his defenses. Felt a bit bad about winning though. He's currently a "D", but was once an "A", I think.

Sean Ameli (an "A") is among the best epeeists in the country and one of the very best veteran epeeists. I think his current national standing for veteran epee is #2. He was the top seed going into the tournament, the 3rd seed after the pools, and came in 3rd at the end. He's left-handed and has lots of bouncing speed, and is just all around excellent. Great ability to land arm hits on the outside. Well, I managed *one* point against him. Good enough!

Robert Lipp (an "A"), seeded 10th before the start and 12th after the pools. For some reason I can't recall the details of this bout too well. I did my best, but on at least a couple of occassions my ripostes or remises just barely missed. At one point he launched a fast fleche and I leapt back, retreating so fast I nearly fell down, but managed to land a hit while avoiding his point. That was a nice moment. I was definitely putting my all into it.

Barry Leonardini (a "U") was an interesting, unorthodox fencer. An older guy (over 60 at least, maybe 70 or near it?), his fencing "stance" was "walking around", more or less. He tended to wander back and forth on the strip, often half off the edge and sometimes all the way off. He used a french grip and during my bout with him he switched several times from pommelling and holding it closer to the guard. Whenever I saw him start to pommell I starting using hard beats and he'd soon switch back to a closer grip. At one point I noticed he had rotated the grip so that the wide part of the bell guard was "wrong"—facing up and inside. I figured this was useful for some unorthodox attack, perhaps a very pronated and/or angulated attack? In any case, I won fairly handily, but he was very interesting to fence.

Bob Baldwin (a "D") I fenced last and enjoyed the most. He got the first point or two, then I caught up a bit, then he was up by 2. If I remember right, we were at 2-3, then scored a double, making it 3-4. In a bout to 5 it is quite uncomfortable to find yourself at 3-4. One of my main goals in this tournament was keeping calm, with a relaxed upper body (and hard working legs), avoiding nervousness and making every effort to *enjoy* it all. I also made efforts to be patient, which is harder when you are down in points. All these came together very nicely in this bout. I waited for the right moment—which ended up in somewhat ungraceful close combat, but I managed to land a remise and got a single light hit, making it 4-4. Then the need for calm, relaxed, hard working, patient focus was just as great. After some probing we clashed—a double touch, thrown out because 4-4. Then some more manuevering and presto, I scored a single light with a parry-riposte.

That bout felt great. Not only was I able to keep my cool, but we engaged in all kinds of manuevering and efforts to deceive, set up and break patterns, etc. Unlike with someone like Ameli, I felt I could perceive many of his tactics as they developed, and was able to employ my own, each of us with about equal success.

My first DE bout after the pools was against Jonathan Jefferies, a "B" fencer who I had never met or heard of before. He had seeded 15th, to my 18th, which looked promising. I got some advice from Jeff and Aaron, who had been in his pool. He fleches, they say, pay attention to distance, and give yourself extra. He's good at remises, so avoid direct attacks, Aaron said, try to draw him out with feints and second intentions. Well, I was fairly trounced, losing 4-10. His fleches were good. They were fast but not lightning fast, however he was able to bind up my blade as he fleches in ways I couldn't get out of and still don't quite understand. Ah well, as before I did my best, worked hard, kept calm, avoided nervousness, and enjoyed it.

The rest of the DEs included some exciting bouts. Jim Arrigoni won his first DE against Trip, then went up against Mike Perka—an "A" fencer and one of the best veterans in the region, if not the whole country. Mike would take the lead only to have Jim rally and tie it up, several times. As time was running down Jim was behind 6-7, but got a single light, tying it at 7-7. Time ran out and they went into sudden death. Mike got priority, and after a bit he scored and won. So close! Jim came in 10th overall, earning his "D" rating. Had he beaten Mike he would have come in 7th (assuming he lost the next DE), and earned a "C". Damn he's been getting better and better.

Then there were the DE bouts with Walter Dragonetti, who was 4th seed after the pools. First he fenced Jeff, winning 10-0. Afterward Jeff said "that was totally not fun" and "he was toying with me". Maybe, although watching "Dragon" in further bouts, his style tends to be something like John Varney's—retreating and retreating to his end of the strip, then making a hit. Sometimes that can feel very frustrating. Perhaps that is why some people do it. Anyway, after Jeff, Dragonetti beat Gareth Mason, who I don't know.

Then, in the Final 8 it was Dragonetti vs. Travis Exum (4th and 5th seeds). I *know* Travis is very good and I was very curious to see how he might deal with this "Dragon". Being both generally defensive, they got called for non-combativity and the bout went fairly quickly. I wasn't sure if Travis could beat him, but was surprised when he lost 7-1.

Travis (R) and Dragonetti (L)

After that, Dragonetti went up against another of my clubmates, the awesome Mikol Ryon (who had seeded 1st). This was a semifinal bout and up on the raised strip under the bright lights, with a sizable crowd watching. It was amazing to watch these elite guys. Dragonetti took the lead early on and I don't think Mikol ever managed to catch up. He lost 6-10. At one point they clashed hard and Mikol fell down in a way that looked strange, like he had been hurt. My flash thought of a broke blade passed as I saw both blades looking fine. Turned out his mask had jammed up hard on his chin, making his teeth smash together and chipping a couple. For a minute he stood, pulling bits of tooth out. Marshall asked "are you alright?" Mikol said "not really". Marshall asked if he wanted "ten minutes for medical" or a couple other options I didn't catch. Mikol said no, and after putting some bits of tooth in his pocket (!), said he would continue and put his mask back on. There was applause. I think most people in the club, Mikol's club, were really hoping he'd win, especially after that. There was applause after his hits, but little if any for Dragonetti. Nonetheless, "the dragon" won.

There was a minor upset in the other semifinal. David Jensen (7th seed) beat Sean Ameli (3rd). So the final bout would not be, as Trip had put it, "another Ameli-Dragonetti bout" (I didn't know this was a common occurence!). I kind of wanted to see someone put this dragon down, but thought Ameli was probably more likely to have done it than Jensen—although I knew next to nothing about Jensen. Anyway, as with other Dragonetti bouts, there was non-combativity and things went fast. Jensen did better than I expected, getting to a 4-4 tie before time ran out (veteran DE bouts are to 10 points, but these guys were being *very* cautious). So, sudden death overtime. Priority went to Jensen! Dragonetti used nearly the full minute of overtime before landing a hit and winning, 5-4. Man. "Dragon" indeed.

Mikol (L) and Dragonetti (R)

Folks watching the semis and final bouts. (pictures posted to Facebook by Kundry)

Beginner to intermediate fencing

Been reading Epée Fencing, from Leon Paul. Subtitled A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Olympic Gold (With no guarantee you'll ever get anywhere near it). The book is divided into beginner, intermediate, and advanced sections. The advanced section is aimed at world class fencers, so the intermediate section is more advanced than I usually would think, at least for my goals! It seems that I am still a beginner, but getting closer to intermediate, according to their definitions. There's a list of things you need to be able to answer "yes" to in order to be what they are calling an intermediate fencer. Rephrased from questions to statements (with comments about where I am now):

• Your hand automatically leads in an attack. (usually, working on it)
• When recovering from an attack, your arm is the last to fall into the on guard position. (not that often, got to work on this more)
• Can use stop hits with opposition. (I think so)
• Can stop hit to wrist with angulation. (yes)
• Can remise effectively. (yes)
• Your three parries (4, 6, 8) are technically perfect, and you riposte quickly and in-line. (my parries not technically perfect, but mostly good I think; ripostes less "perfect", especially from 8)
• Your disengages are very small, normally say only 20-30 centimetres in diameter [8-12 inches]. (I think so, "normally" anyway)
• You normally keep your feet moving at all times during a bout, and vary the tempo. ("normally", mostly yes, I think)
• You maintain a correct fencing distance and resist being lulled into a closer distance by a cunning opponent. (I think so, although maybe not as well with very cunning opponents; on the other hand, I seem to sometimes be able to lull opponents into coming too close...)
• Your lunges and flèches attract admiring comments from your coach and other club members. (not really, just the opposite for my flèches, sometimes)
• You are in good physical shape. (getting better, but...)
• You have been fencing two or three times a week for at least two years. (no, only one year, not counting the long long ago stuff).

That provides a list of things I could, or ought to be working on. The main things seem to be:

• Hand leads
• Arm last to recover
• Perfect parries 4, 6, and 8
• In-line ripostes from 4, 6, and 8 (especially 8!)
• Better flèching.

Put that way, it sounds quite manageable...