Happy Birthday Paddy!

RMC Fencing Tournament

I've just recently been added to the varsity fencing team! On Saturday, we drove from Carleton U at 5am down to Kingston for the day to compete at a fencing tournament at the Royal Military College. I'm competing with a group of four on the school foil team. We traveled with the men's sabre and women's épée team. The way it works is each team of four for every weapon competes against other teams of four, from other universities or private clubs. To win, each team has to make 45 touches before the other, and each player has to make 5 touches in every bout within 2 minutes. It's organized into a round robin at first and then instant knock-out after each team plays three other teams in the round robin.

The men's foil team started the day off (in fact, I was the starting player and only rookie on the team...Pressure!). It was all good though, I didn't do too bad in the first bout -- lost 5-2. We ended up barely winning the first series 45-36ish. After that, we completely dismantled the next team 45-22, but got whooped 45-28ish in the next series. We were able to gain enough points in our group to move on to the knock-out round but lost horribly in the first series...I won't even repeat the score. But whatever, it was lots of fun and our team deserved hundreds of style points. We ended up placing 17th out of 35 teams, which ain't too shabby for having a huge rookie on the team.

I snapped together a load of clips from the tournament. In every clip, Carleton is on the left side of the screen. If you don't know what's going on, don't worry, it's hard to decipher in real life. It's really fast. Keep on eye for the green/red light in the background to every bout, it tells you which side made a hit. (You won't find me in the clips, my madskillz are too frightening to watch).