Had a marathon of a fencing day yesterday, 6 am to 8:30pm. We took the new Lowell team (this is our first season) to the Junior Varsity Championships in Winnetka and we fielded 3 squads at the tournament. Boys saber, boys foil and girls foil. We were unable to fill a girls saber team do to some last minute issues.
My saber squad came in 5th out of 9, which was a great finish. Both the boys and girls foil squads came in 7th out of 11 in their divisions. Again very solid results.
5th and 7th may not seem very good to most people but we have the newest team and all of our fencers are new to the sport. Every team that beat my saber squad is at least 10 years old, every team but ours has paid coaches, every team has a full varsity teams to help train the JV squads, most of the teams ahead of us also have year round club programs, etc etc etc! My most experienced saber fencers have no more than 6 months of experience, and most of them have about 3 months experience. We have no Varsity level kids to help raise our skill level in practice bouts bad we don't even have a budget to repair broken equipment so I cobble together cords and blades with scavenged parts and try to get as much time getting them to learn more advanced techniques while still stressing the basics.
Our Foil coach is similarly a volunteer and does her best with her squads, old equipment, and inexperienced fencers.
Honestly I'm thrilled with the results from the tournament.
Oh, and I'm an assistant for the Marian Catholic team and all three Lowell squads beat their respective Marian squads too!
My saber squad came in 5th out of 9, which was a great finish. Both the boys and girls foil squads came in 7th out of 11 in their divisions. Again very solid results.
5th and 7th may not seem very good to most people but we have the newest team and all of our fencers are new to the sport. Every team that beat my saber squad is at least 10 years old, every team but ours has paid coaches, every team has a full varsity teams to help train the JV squads, most of the teams ahead of us also have year round club programs, etc etc etc! My most experienced saber fencers have no more than 6 months of experience, and most of them have about 3 months experience. We have no Varsity level kids to help raise our skill level in practice bouts bad we don't even have a budget to repair broken equipment so I cobble together cords and blades with scavenged parts and try to get as much time getting them to learn more advanced techniques while still stressing the basics.
Our Foil coach is similarly a volunteer and does her best with her squads, old equipment, and inexperienced fencers.
Honestly I'm thrilled with the results from the tournament.
Oh, and I'm an assistant for the Marian Catholic team and all three Lowell squads beat their respective Marian squads too!