It was the first meet since summer vacation had ended. Walking into the fencing club I was a little bit nervous about how I was going to do. Outside it was very rainy and windy this was the cause of not many people showing up to the meet.
To be entered in a meet you have to sign in at the desk in the club when you arrive or you will not be allowed to fence. Once I sign in I get ready (more details about getting ready) and start practicing with whoever is there. And soon it was time to start the meet. The way a meet works is that you are placed into a pool and you fence everyone in your pool. Then you are ranked by who scored the most points to the least. I had to fence four other people in my pool the first two people I won against and the other two I lost against. After I lost I tried to figure out what happened and why I lost so that I can use that strategy when I fence next time. One particular person I lost too was interesting. They moved slow until they wanted to hit and then they moved there hand very fast and it was hard for me to react. I learned a lot from fencing that person.
After we fence in our pool we go into direct elimination. We are ranked by who did the best and who did the worst in all the pools. The best person fences the worst and second place would fence the person who did the second worst and so on. I ended up fencing someone that I had already fenced in my pool and lost to. In direct elimination you do a 15 touch bout and between every three minutes you get a minute break. The first three minutes I was winning 7 to 2. But after the break when I came back I started to lose a lot of touches and before the end of the second three minute interval he beat me 9 to 15. It was very close until I started to think about winning and not about the current touch. I learned to stay focused even though I was winning so I don’t start to think about winning. In the end it was a very good first fencing tournament back from summer break and I am exited to go to another one and show what I have learned since then.