Tourney Reflection v. 7

So my first impression upon walking into JMU's UREC for the tournament this past weekend was Holy crap, I so picked the wrong college. Not that I minded running along the cracked pavement of suburban Lynchburg sidewalks to get my exercise. But wouldn't it have been nice to go and play on a nifty rock wall on those rainy days instead of retreating to the dark smelly weight room in the basement of the LC gym. Oh well.

Honestly, I'd rather keep talking about the amenities of the building than talk about the competition. Out of three Salle Green women competing, we won a total of...um...zero pool bouts. But what can we say - none of us had even an inkling that we might be qualifying for Nationals and I think most of our competitors were hoping for it. So we were just beefing up the numbers to help them out. They can thank us later.

For me, four out of five pool bouts were well fought and well lost on my part. I was simply outclassed and thus hold little enmity for my opponents or for myself in this case. I hope that I will be fencing as well as certain other women in a few years. (Few years? Will I still be alive so far into the future...)

The need to put 18 fencers into a round of 32 made for a very small first round of the DE. It also pitted me against my salle-mate and frequent sparring partner. A Pyrrhic victory to say the least so I'm not really ready to check "Get to 2nd round of DE" off my to-do list yet.

The watchword is "Speed". This summer: how to get it, what to do with it when you find it.