Practice, 5/24

As the quarter winds down, attendance is really falling off. Eight people showed up for practice today. No formal lesson was held. The electric box was set up, and several fencers rotated through to get experience.

Greg did some one on one sabre lessons, focusing mainly on building good attack form habits (wrist, not elbow), and beat-attacks.

Thursday 5/19

The bulk of the time Thursday was spent preparing for our Annual Report to the Sports Club Council. This report is something we have to do yearly, and is used as the primary justification for our budget allocation next year. In other words, very important. The majority activity was inventorying all of our equipment, as required. Then those people who attended tournaments this year wrote up more details of their experience and what the club learned from them.

Some fencing was had, though. Your chronicler was called away on a call-from work, so isn't able to describe how things went in the last half hour.

Rain City Open 5/14-15

WWU Fencers participated in both days of the event. We had two fencers in the Women's Foil event on Saturday, and six fencers in the Mixed Foil event on Sunday. Complete results have been posted on askfred.net.

Mikah and Morgan participated in the Women's event. The action was described as strong and fast, something our club isn't quite. Mikah and Morgan finished 21st and 22nd of 22 respectively.

The Mixed Foil event was smaller than we were expecting, with only 42 people showing up. Pre-registration had a number of 50. The Tournament ended up being a B2 event, and one fencer renewed their C ranking by finishing third in the tournament.

The level of competition at this tournament was very intimidating. Of the 42 fencers present, only ten held no ranking, and we brought six of those people. There were six B-ranked fencers and twelve C-ranked fencers, who among them managed to dominate the top 18 spots. A few D-fencers snuck past in the 11, 12, 16, and 18 spots, and some C-fencers finished in the 19, 20, and 24-tied positions.

The pool bouts leading up to the direct-elimination seeding did WWU fencers both a good and bad turn. One of our strongest fencers, Colin, was placed in a very tough pool which led to poor indicators going into the direct-eliminations and ultimately a bad seed. Two of our fencers were placed in the same pool, Greg and Morgan, which ended up giving Greg an advantage in the DE's at the expense of Morgan.

The direct-elimination round at this tournament was done with people who seeded 32 or higher, in order to make the DE-tree balanced. No WWU fencers won their DE bouts, as they both were fencing people seeded in the top seven and those seven were there for a reason.

The final placement of WWU fencers was:

26 - KY
27(tied) - Greg
34 - Andy
36 - Kevin
38(tied) - Colin
42 - Morgan

In good news for our club, KY, Greg, and a fencer from the Rain City Fencing Club who tied with KY represented a group of Unranked fencers that managed to finish higher than all E-ranked fencers in the tournament.

Practice & Elections 5/10

Elections for officers next year were held today.

• President-Micah
• VP- Morgan
• Treasurer- KY
• Historian- Brandon
• Armorer- Joe
• Secretary- Kristy
• Sports Council Rep- Greg

Several members will be going to the Rain City Open this Saturday and Sunday. At least one fencer was planning on making the Women's Foil even Saturday, and more of us are going to be going to the Mixed Foil event Sunday morning.

Turnout today was good, with 17 people showing up and voting.

Practice 5/3

Practice was moderate today, with about 15 people showing up. The main lesson was the introduction of a couple of advanced couter-attack methods. The footwork drill shifted from the previous style-oriented drills to a speed oriented drill; we're advanced enough that this sort of drill is now possible.

Several announcements were made at the meeting:

• There will be no practice on May 5th. Carver is closed for an unspecified 'special event' that is probably a basketball game. An informal gathering in Red Square may happen at the usual time, weather permitting.
• The CSC organization will be holding their training class next Tuesday at 5pm, somewhere in the Rec Center. CSC is something that Fencing hasn't done any of, but other clubs have earned serious money through CSC. CSC provides people as ticket-takers, bouncers, and security checkers at sporting and entertainment events.
• A group of WWU Fencers will be going to the Rain City Open on Sunday, May 15th. Precise travel plans haven't been formed yet.

Officer Elections will be held next week. Nominations were taken this week. The only contested positions are for President and Vice President. Colin and KY will be stepping down and not running, as both are in their last year next year.