On yet another very hot Tuesday evening (and what was to be the start of the fourth heatwave for this year), we had nine fencers attend for the last Tuesday of July and, the monthly club competition. Claudia was in attendance as the referee for the night and Jenni was there as the scorekeeper.The nine attendees were grouped into teams of three, for a fast and furious team competition. Each team would compete against the other two teams, with the hope of finding an overall winner. Each fencer would fight to three hits, with doubles being taken into account and each team member had three lives, so, if you had a hit against you, you would lose a life and, if you had three hits against you, you couldn’t participate in that match any longer. The team to have a member still standing with a life, at the end of each round of bouts would be the winners. Initially Team A (Peter, Mark and Tadek) took on Team B (Josh, Steve and Paul). Peter and Josh had a close match, with Peter just finding the edge and knocking out Josh, but with only one life remaining. Mark didn’t fair as well against Steve and Tadek was disappointed in only gaining one hit against Paul. Peter had it all to do for the team, but with only one life to participate with, it was always going to be an uphill struggle against Steve (and his three remaining lives) and eventually, Steve did get the hit that saw Team B being crowned winners in this round. Next up, we had the Team B winners remaining on piste and taking on Team C (Tom, Ryan and Phil). This time round Josh was successful against Tom, but only came out of the bout with two lives remaining. Steve couldn’t beat the left-handed Ryan and Paul and Phil dumped each other out of the running with a three-all scoreline! It was left to Josh, with his two lives, to take on Ryan, with his three lives. In what we thought would be a close match proved unfounded as Josh also struggled to contain the wily moves of the left-handed Ryan, who took the match two to nil and thus crowned Team C the champions. In the final pairings, we saw Team A take on Team C and, we were hoping that this would provide us with an overall winner. However, in eerily similar circumstances to the first two rounds, we saw one team down to one surviving member, after all three team members had fought and, it was on this round that the winners were crowned. Peter led Team A to a three v one victory over Tom and this optimism clearly played out among the rest of his compatriots. Mark took on, the previously undefeated, Ryan and won with the narrowest of three v two victories and, finally Tadek made a good showing against a newly energised Phil, but just missed out on making three for three, losing to Phil by three hits to two. The final showdown was then father versus son, with Phil taking on Peter, but Peter had the upper hand with an extra life intact. Phil started well, managing to get the first hit and take Peter down to one life remaining, but, in the one-hit showdown, it was Peter who triumphed and took Phil’s last remaining life with the next hit. This crowned Team the winners.So overall, each of the team’s won one of their rounds and, after much discussion and, given the heat, it was decided that it would be declared a three-way tie (although, Team A are still relishing in an unfound glory of Champions due to having the most hits scored!). Well done to everybody who attended and fingers crossed that the remaining competitions for the year are in somewhat cooler conditions! Enjoy the holidays and we’ll see you all again for the September competition.
