On Sunday 16th April 2023, seven of Gravesham Fencing’s finest attended the Kent Open Epee Championships at Polo Farm Sports Club in Canterbury. With a nice day beckoning, registration times that weren’t too early and nice run down the A2/M2, the team congregated in the sports venue, eyeing up the competition as other competitors started to trickle in. The girls had arrived early, as had Coach Will (providing support and the odd coaching input), in order to support the men, who had the earlier start. With 22 men and 11 women, it looked like there was a chance that we could see some of the team through to the later rounds.
The men were split into three poules, with Phil on his own in poule 1, as was Paul in poule 3. Dave, Steve and Kevin (who was fighting under a separate club name) found themselves grouped together in poule 2. First up was Dave versus Steve, not the ideal start to the competition, as they were both wanting to compete against a non-club member first. Paul found himself in quite the competitive group, managing one win out of 6, with only two matches seeing him score less than 3 points. An arm injury hampering his progress and this eventually led to him having to retire before the knockout stage. Phil saw himself in an equally spirited group, but managed to win 2 bouts, and scoring well in the remaining 4. The remaining group, containing 3 of Gravesham’s men, saw an outright leader from the opposition, with another competitor hot on his heels, but the remaining 6 men were pretty evenly matched. Prior to the knockout stage, Dave was the highest seed for Gravesham, in 9th, with Phil hot on his heels at 13th, with Steve, Paul and Kevin following on respectively. Steve and Phil made it through the first round of knockout, with Dave getting a bye, Kevin losing out to his opponent and, as mentioned earlier, Paul having to retire through injury. Unfortunately, the last 16 is where Dave and Phil’s competition came to an end, with both men losing an eventual winner and medallist. Given that the event is usually quite small, the standard of competition was very high this year and all of the men can hold their heads high. One small consolation was that we did in fact get to hold the trophy for part of the event. It might have been returning it on Joe’s behalf, but there are photo’s of Paul holding the trophy aloft at the 2023 competition. Better luck next year, let’s hope we can win it back in 2024.
While the men were still competing in their pools a group of 11 women, 2 of whom were Sofia and Claudia from Gravesham (and both juniors) were getting their welcome talk and being given their poules. Claudia managed to compete in the poule of 5, whilst Sofia got the 6 and, on top of that the greater number of fencers who clearly had experience over both of the girls. Claudia managed 3 wins out of 4, but failed to score against her nemesis in the 4th match. Sofia coped equally well in her pool, wining 3 out of 5 matches, scoring well in the fourth, but like Claudia, failed to land a hit in her 5th. This left Claudia as 4th seed and Sofia as 6th seed, merely by the strength of their indicator score. Claudia was ecstatic to see that this left her a bye straight into the quarter-finals, but Sofia had to face an opponent to get to the same stage. No worries were had there though, with her pulling through easily. With both girls managing to avoid each other in the quarter-finals, they found themselves up against the ladies, and clearly more experienced fencers of the competition. Both lost out, despite getting hits off of their opponents and both left the competition with the other fencers wondering where they had come from! Overall, Claudia finished in 5thplace, with Sofia hot on her heels in 6th. Well done girls, especially as you were up against some stiff competition. Let’s hope it’s been a good warm up for the BYC’s (British Youth Championships), in Sheffield, on Bank Holiday weekend. Good luck for that one.
Well done, Gravesham, a good showing, some good placingsand a lovely team atmosphere. Let’s see if a few more can join us for the South East Region Open Epee in May 2023.