Woot!
Last night was the end-of-the-quarter "tournament" for fencing class.
Numbers you need:
7 beginning fencers (one of them being myself)
6 bouts per fencer
3 touches per bout (we didn't have enough time to go to five)
Victories on Marie's part: 3 (woot!)
Defeats on Marie's part: 3 (two with no touches scored against my opponent, woe is me)
So I've broken my D-1 streak in both ways at once. Last quarter I lost every bout, but managed to score a single touch against my opponent before losing each time. This time I won half of my bouts, but failed to land a single touch on two of the people who beat me, to which I say drat.
The good: It's encouraging to see that I'm improving. I'm less intimidated by most opponents and more willing to be aggressive. I'm also getting better at observing my opponent and picking up on their weaknesses and bad habits, the better to disengage predictable parries and so forth. Now all I have to do is actually put this useful knowledge to work and beat them with it.
The bad: Hesitation is death. Even when I was disengaging all over the place, and giving myself nice clear lines to target area, I kept falling short and not quite landing the touch or flinching and landing it off-target. This is frustrating. Furthermore, my parries still tend to be wimpy and perfunctory, which usually means that they don't work, my opponent's blade is not properly locked out, and I get poked.
The ugly: There is no parry! There is only parry-riposte! There is no parry! There is only parry-riposte! Also, coach pointed out that I'm developing a habit of sweeping everything in eight, which is bad for two reasons: 1) Half the attacks I parry are not even in eight, since I'm fencing foil now, so there's no point in continuously dropping my point so low to block them when a parry four or six would do the trick. 2) Even assuming I remembered to riposte after said parry, having my point so low would make the riposte very slow indeed. So we'll have to work on that. Grarr.
The random: I executed some spiffy attack that involved picking up my opponent's blade on the attack and sticking him while binding him out. When calling the action, Coach referred to this by some fancy french term that I misheard as "a priest's affaire attack". Mr. Bill told me what the proper term was later, and how to spell it in french, but I forget now. Either way, it was a fun little maneuver and I think I almost had Coach convinced for a second that I'd done it on purpose, so that's fun.
Overall, a really fun night. Or at least it was until I got outside and discovered a $100 parking ticket for not having the proper pass for the gym parking lot. I've been parking in that lot three times a week for a year, with only my residential pass (which does not expire until the end of the month) and never before gotten a ticket. Huh. Oh well.
Numbers you need:
7 beginning fencers (one of them being myself)
6 bouts per fencer
3 touches per bout (we didn't have enough time to go to five)
Victories on Marie's part: 3 (woot!)
Defeats on Marie's part: 3 (two with no touches scored against my opponent, woe is me)
So I've broken my D-1 streak in both ways at once. Last quarter I lost every bout, but managed to score a single touch against my opponent before losing each time. This time I won half of my bouts, but failed to land a single touch on two of the people who beat me, to which I say drat.
The good: It's encouraging to see that I'm improving. I'm less intimidated by most opponents and more willing to be aggressive. I'm also getting better at observing my opponent and picking up on their weaknesses and bad habits, the better to disengage predictable parries and so forth. Now all I have to do is actually put this useful knowledge to work and beat them with it.
The bad: Hesitation is death. Even when I was disengaging all over the place, and giving myself nice clear lines to target area, I kept falling short and not quite landing the touch or flinching and landing it off-target. This is frustrating. Furthermore, my parries still tend to be wimpy and perfunctory, which usually means that they don't work, my opponent's blade is not properly locked out, and I get poked.
The ugly: There is no parry! There is only parry-riposte! There is no parry! There is only parry-riposte! Also, coach pointed out that I'm developing a habit of sweeping everything in eight, which is bad for two reasons: 1) Half the attacks I parry are not even in eight, since I'm fencing foil now, so there's no point in continuously dropping my point so low to block them when a parry four or six would do the trick. 2) Even assuming I remembered to riposte after said parry, having my point so low would make the riposte very slow indeed. So we'll have to work on that. Grarr.
The random: I executed some spiffy attack that involved picking up my opponent's blade on the attack and sticking him while binding him out. When calling the action, Coach referred to this by some fancy french term that I misheard as "a priest's affaire attack". Mr. Bill told me what the proper term was later, and how to spell it in french, but I forget now. Either way, it was a fun little maneuver and I think I almost had Coach convinced for a second that I'd done it on purpose, so that's fun.
Overall, a really fun night. Or at least it was until I got outside and discovered a $100 parking ticket for not having the proper pass for the gym parking lot. I've been parking in that lot three times a week for a year, with only my residential pass (which does not expire until the end of the month) and never before gotten a ticket. Huh. Oh well.