Silver.
November 15th 2004
I was waiting on photos for this but they are here now so here you go:
Here are the “Old Bags” as we have christened ourselves for next year. Last year we entered as an alumni team and after the pools, we were ranked first. That was amazing, as Amy is a sabreist, I was rusty, and it was Ainsley who saved the day.
Of course we all fell apart after that and got knocked out in our first DE match. This year, we resolved to have just as much fun, but to do better than last year.
We came down to Kingston on Friday night, and stayed with Amy’s fiance Stephan’s parents. So Amy, me, Chris and Stephan spent an enjoyable evening and got to go to bed in good time for the next day.
Saturday it was Chris and Stephan fencing. There was some big competition there, a lot of military teams like Westpoint and the British Combined services. They made it to the DE matches (there were 37 teams there and only the top 16 went on!), but unfortunately got knocked out in their first DE match.
I bought a new epee with an ultralight bell and Belgian style grip. I have been using an Allstar cross grip and it makes my hands ache sometimes, so I figured getting a backup that was different would be more hand healthy. Plus I don’t trust my primary epee at the moment – it’s about to go.
That evening we had supper with Stephan’s parents and I went to bed quite early because I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Of course we had to fance first thing on Sunday morning. I was feeling kind of rough when I woke up, but that seems to be standard.
We fenced in the only pool of 4, which was kind of good and kind of bad. Good because it can let you recover a little if you have a bad match, but bad because you have to fence an extra 3 bouts each.
In our pool we had Westpoint (the same girls we fenced last year which was kind of neat), Queens A, and Brock. We started fencing Westpoint and beat them with a fairly comfortable margin. They have changed their style a little since last year but I think they were all mostly foilists primarily because they still do a lot of foil tricks but they were a lot better than last year.
Then we fenced Queens A, which was a disaster. For some reason, all of us just sat like rocks and totally blew it. I mean, we are all friends and a close team but this was ridiculous! I was shut out 5-0 on both my first bouts and lost 5-3 on the last, which is pathetic. So that was bad. We fenced Brock next which was good, because they weren’t as good and gave us a chance to come back.
Around this time is when I always feel like quitting competing. There is a part where you feel too adrenaliney and low blood sugary (because you only have time to eat a bite or two of an energy bar in between bouts), tired and sore and you feel like you just suck and should give up. I started whining about it and giving dire pronouncements about retiring, as is my wont.
We had a brief 20 minute breather after the pools, where I ate the other half of my energy bar and drank some water. We were ranked 7th after the pools, which wasn’t as good as last year, but was fine, as the top 16 go on.
We fenced the 10th seeded RMC team next, and beat them quite handily. This meant we were in the top 8. This is where we started to wake up and do better. After that we fenced The Cutting Edge, which had some familiar faces from when I was a varsity fencer. We managed to beat them too, but it was close. So then we were in top 4.
Scary stuff! The next team we fenced was the British Combined Services military team. We beat them too, and all of a sudden we were in the gold medal match!
We got another chance to fence Queens A, and while we lost 35-45, it was still a lot of fun. I beat their anchor 8-5 after her beating me 5-3 in our first matchup, so that was personally satisfying to me. We fought hard for it instead of letting them beat us like our pool match, and I think we surprised them a little, and we won the silver honestly.
So all in all, it was a great day, if long. We started fencing at 9am and managed to hork our medals early at around 5pm so we got on the road in good time and were home by 7:30pm. Maybe I will even do it again next year.
