The previous weekend, I competed in the Centrulo and Santelli Fencing tournament. This is my second time particiating in this tournament, but it was just as fun and enjoyable this year. Not just that, I had improved markedly in one year, which I am quite proud of.
This tournament consists of 6 seperate competitions, split evenly among the three types of weapons (Epee, Saber, and Foil) and then again seperated into men and women divisions. The men’s competitions were hosted on Saturday Janurary 11th, and the women the day after.
The way the tournament works, is that in the first round, all the teams aret split into 6 or 7 groups, each with around 8 teams. then each team competes with the other teams in the group, before the teams are reorganized into different groups in the second round to narrow down their rankings.
Last year, I did terribly, since it was my first year of fencing and we were also placed in the same group as many top level fencing teams. Then in the second round, I won all my bouts, but that was only because we had been moved to the seventh and last group. This year however, I actually managed to win a few matches in the first round, meaning that my team was placed higher, into the 5th group in the second round. Then in the second round, I performed even better.
In end, my school’s boys epee team placed 40th overall. While my results have improved from last year, I still have a lot more to learn, and a lot of room for improvement. In fact, this is one of my favorite parts of this competition: it is a very rare opportunity to be able to fence 14 times with 14 different fencers in rapid succession, and I learned so much from each of those bouts from analyzing mistakes, to trying new tactics to just gaining a lot of experience in general.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed this tournament and will be sure to come back next year!
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