Update: A ridiculous amount of fencing
I've been pretty quiet lately, and it's because I've been SUPER STRESSED OUT about this fencing competition my club was hosting. It's the brainchild of me and one of the other officers, and I ended up doing quite a bit of the organization. Which sucked up a lot of time since the competition attracted about three times as many people as we were expecting. Like, it was a silly relay team tournament, and we were figuring about 4-6 teams per weapon would show up and we'd do a round robin. Instead 11-13 teams per weapon showed up (about 100 people), and we had to do bouts + bracket. For a solid two weeks I've been watching the registration numbers climb and panicking. I obtained extra strips (so that we had 12), got us access to one of the local clubs when we realized we'd probably run past the closing time of our gym, got places to stay for 11 out-of-state fencers, and sent a huge number of emails.
Put on top of this that I had agreed to fence all three weapons with two of my friends. Hahahaha.
But it all went really well! Really, really well. We fit all 12 strips in the gym, and all of the out-of-state fencers had places to stay. Sabre ran smoothly, and while foil and epee got delayed a little, they ran mostly smoothly too. We did end up in the overflow location, but mostly it seemed like people understood that this was a ridiculous experience and had fun with it. People came up to me all day to say thank you for organizing it and that they'd had a great time and were looking forward to next year. I was my usual competitive mess and got pretty upset when we got knocked out in sabre, but I did have a lot of fun fencing foil and I did better in epee than usual. And my friends were very high-energy, which was great because we finished at 10.45 pm. After starting at 9 (and I was already doing organization stuff at 7.30). 14 hours of fencing. My mantra was 'NEXT YEAR TWO DAYS,' and I think that will help us out a lot. Also it wouldn't be as exhausting. I spent today in a fog of stiff limbs, bruised arms and superbowl, haha. In total I fenced about 39 bouts, which is A LOT.
There's lots of little things that made it super worthwhile. Getting to fence the head coach of my HS gig in her weapon (and getting crushed). Swapping between weapons and feeling how it changed my sabre game. Chatting with people that I know well or have never met or see once a year. Getting to fence against some of my students as competitors (although I sadly missed out on fencing some of my other students). It was a huge full day and it was overwhelming and wonderful. As one of the other officers put it: "this is a nightmare, I'm so excited."
Results-wise: top 8 in sabre and foil, and second place in epee (which is great because none of us fence epee). The head coach at my HS and her team got second in foil, a team mostly made up of my students got second in sabre, and of course I know half of the people who participated so a full accounting would basically be the same as reproducing all of the results. But I'm really glad it went well and I'm really glad it's OVER. Last night we went from cleaning up to a late night Chinese place, where I ate a huge amount of food and reveled in the fact that I'm almost done with this tournament. Just need to upload the results tomorrow and send out an email thanking everyone for fencing and helping and being great.
I was re-reading my earliest posts about fencing on this blog the other night, and thinking about how I would never have been able to envision myself doing any of this stuff. Coaching, being a club officer, organizing a big competition. I'm really glad I've kept a journal for these 7 years of sports obsession, so that I can see how everything gradually changed.
This entry was originally posted at http://neveralarch.dreamwidth.org/86024.html. Comment wherever you want.
Put on top of this that I had agreed to fence all three weapons with two of my friends. Hahahaha.
But it all went really well! Really, really well. We fit all 12 strips in the gym, and all of the out-of-state fencers had places to stay. Sabre ran smoothly, and while foil and epee got delayed a little, they ran mostly smoothly too. We did end up in the overflow location, but mostly it seemed like people understood that this was a ridiculous experience and had fun with it. People came up to me all day to say thank you for organizing it and that they'd had a great time and were looking forward to next year. I was my usual competitive mess and got pretty upset when we got knocked out in sabre, but I did have a lot of fun fencing foil and I did better in epee than usual. And my friends were very high-energy, which was great because we finished at 10.45 pm. After starting at 9 (and I was already doing organization stuff at 7.30). 14 hours of fencing. My mantra was 'NEXT YEAR TWO DAYS,' and I think that will help us out a lot. Also it wouldn't be as exhausting. I spent today in a fog of stiff limbs, bruised arms and superbowl, haha. In total I fenced about 39 bouts, which is A LOT.
There's lots of little things that made it super worthwhile. Getting to fence the head coach of my HS gig in her weapon (and getting crushed). Swapping between weapons and feeling how it changed my sabre game. Chatting with people that I know well or have never met or see once a year. Getting to fence against some of my students as competitors (although I sadly missed out on fencing some of my other students). It was a huge full day and it was overwhelming and wonderful. As one of the other officers put it: "this is a nightmare, I'm so excited."
Results-wise: top 8 in sabre and foil, and second place in epee (which is great because none of us fence epee). The head coach at my HS and her team got second in foil, a team mostly made up of my students got second in sabre, and of course I know half of the people who participated so a full accounting would basically be the same as reproducing all of the results. But I'm really glad it went well and I'm really glad it's OVER. Last night we went from cleaning up to a late night Chinese place, where I ate a huge amount of food and reveled in the fact that I'm almost done with this tournament. Just need to upload the results tomorrow and send out an email thanking everyone for fencing and helping and being great.
I was re-reading my earliest posts about fencing on this blog the other night, and thinking about how I would never have been able to envision myself doing any of this stuff. Coaching, being a club officer, organizing a big competition. I'm really glad I've kept a journal for these 7 years of sports obsession, so that I can see how everything gradually changed.
This entry was originally posted at http://neveralarch.dreamwidth.org/86024.html. Comment wherever you want.