Unpredictably Predictable

What did I do with my weekend? Fenced of course! Except it was not exactly as I planned. I thought I would be attending a women's sabre tournament on Saturday. That was cancelled, so I decided to try my luck at the mixed open foil on Sunday. It's a stressful semester, so I still want to hit things.

When I got there, my pool was hilarious. I was the only woman (to be expected at mixed events - there were only 4 in the entire tournament). There were multiple lefties (some of my best friends are lefties, but for the life of me, I don't have the point control to hit them. Although nothing will measure up to my pool at nationals last year - 4 out of 7 fencers were lefties). There was a novice, a veteran, a tiny youth fencer, a B rated fencer (compared to the rest of us who were D and under), the incredible hulk version of me on the strip, and Princeton dude (epic bout from the Princeton team tournament).

I started off fencing the novice. This was a good start. But, when I went to fence the veteran, my point control went to hell and I think I nearly hit the referee. I managed to run out the time, but he still won.

Then I had my rematch with the Princeton dude. 5-2, not epic at all, but I felt kind of smug that besides the B fencer and me, no one hit him at all.

Then I fenced a dude from Temple. This bout was just creepy, because he fenced EXACTLY like me, down to the insane footwork issues. I managed to secure that bout in the last minute, by making him miss. The thing about men's foil is that it can be like bull fighting sometimes. You piss them off until they charge, move out of the way and hit.

Then was tiny fencer. The final score: 2-1. i fail at hitting lefties, so it's not surprising that I only got one point, but this guy was so defensive that no one actually scored any points until the last 30 seconds of the bout.

Finally - B fencer. This was a disaster. Although, as much as I hate to admit it, I am super impressed by the flick over the head to score a point on my back. Kudos.

Pools are tallied, then direct eliminations. Murphy's Law: if more than one Bryn Mawr fencer shows up at a tournament, these two fencers will fence each other for the first DE. Sure enough, Camille and I fence. I move ahead to fence another DE, and lo and behold, who do I draw, but B fencer from pools. I tried to use his tactics against him, but it didn't work so well. I've had too much sabre. At attempted flick to the back hit him in the face. Twice. But, that was enough to piss him off to cause him to charge, so I got to walk away with one point! :)

Final placement: 14th. Not good, but respectable. Another funny thing about that day - It would have been 13th, but the 18th seed beat the 3rd seed to medal and earn his rating. that was kind of epic.