There were 18 fencers signed up for the competition. The playing
field was mostly unrated fencers, with a few 'E' fencers and
one 'D'. However, a good portion of the unrated fencers had ratings
in other weapons, and the three fencers that came from Western PA
each had a 'C' in epee.

The pools were three groups of six fencers. My first bout was
probably the hardest in my pool, and against one of the fencers from
Western PA. He was quick with his blade, but was vulnerable to
direct attacks with a one-two disengage. He caught me on two
separate occasions with the first parry-riposte, but I pulled
through to win 5-2.

The rest of the bouts basically consisted of me doing a feint
attack, letting them parry-riposte or provoking them to attack, and
then parry-riposting myself to land touches. Sometimes direct
attack with disengage or cut-over worked too. I was sure to get out
of my opponent's range as soon as possible after I finished my
attack. This consisted of several jumps backwards, and after two or
three jumps, I gained enough momentum to clear most of the strip.
The problem was trying to stop my momentum. But usually a halt was
called before I could get enough momentum to fly into the back wall
(or trip).

I had three touches against me out of five fencers I faced. The 'D'
fencer, Matt Nadies, only had two against him out of five fencers.
He placed #1 and I was #2. We were a bit relieved that we fell into
separate brackets in the DE round, because we had a nasty habit of
facing each other in the finals. In the past, we had two separate
competitions that had us both facing off in the finals for an 'E'
rank. In both of these Nadies defeated me.

My first two DE bouts were 15-1 victories over #15 rank and then
over around #7 rank. I got in the semi-finals (earning an 'E'), and
was up against the #3 rank from Western PA, Kraft. He had an
extremely aggressive style that involved a lot of footwork forward.
The "fight" was so action-packed that the whole venue stopped to
watch us fence, as the score was quite close the whole time. He
would begin an attack and evade my initial parries while moving at
me incredibly fast. I would wait for his attack to become focused
and then try a parry-riposte while lowering my stance to hit in his
4 target. He was about 6'3" and looked like a marine, so the bout
was intense enough for him to swing his blade up into the ceiling
and smash the lightbulb. It took a few moments to sweep up the
glass before we continued to fence. I starting losing it in the
second period, but Peter Folgner gave me a few pointers during the
break which got me set back on track. I ended up with a victory 15-
12.

The finals were deja vu: against Nadies, but this time for a 'D'
and not for an 'E'. He pulled out an early 7-1 lead over me, due to
my inability to adapt to his left-handed fencing. As a result, he
would attack, and I would parry, but miss my riposte, and he would
remise with a touch. I gathered myself after the first three
minutes of fencing and started landing ripostes on his back when he
would land down and cover his whole front target. I was beginning a
comeback to get up to 7-9. Then Ed Kane started talking to him
during the break. I started only scoring less than half of the
ripostes, and lost 10-15.

Nadies re-earned his D-03, and I re-earned my E-03 by placing
second. One of the fencers from Western got their E-03 in foil by
placing third.

I stayed to qualify in the Mid-Atlantic Sectionals. To qualify, all
I had to do was register and finish. I ended up losing the first
round of DEs due to me just being plain exhausted.

I'll try to focus more during the end of the game.


-Eric Sher