2024: Going to the tape
2025 is approaching rapidly as I sit down to write this, the day after Christmas, to put down some reflections on the past year and check in with a goal I set at the beginning of the year:
“my goal this year was to have an overall longsword record of .500 or better for the calendar year.”
Thanks to a very robust performing schedule that kept me playing most weekends in the fall, I had to scale back my competition events to just 1 this fall, in Erie PA the first weekend of December. During the year, I had told a few of my fencing friends about my goal to have a .500 or better record for the calendar year. All of them were supportive and cautioned me to not lose sight of a few things: We do this for fun, and don’t let a number ruin your enjoyment of the thing. I am really grateful for their perspective, because coming into that final event at 11-15 on the year, there were times where I felt that fixation on the .500 figure overshadow my enjoyment of the sport.
I’ve written about my other tournaments in previous blog entries, so i’m going to skip those and go right to the finale:
Arriving at the event site in Erie the week after a snowstorm dumped 3 feet of snow on the ground, miraculously the event went off without a hitch. The Erie club is a great group of folks who are in alignment with a lot of the same values as mine. We also were guaranteed a total of 8 fights, with each exchange limited to 4 passes. Most formats call either for a time limit (3 minutes for example) or a scoring threshold to be reached to end a match. 4 passes with no time limit meant that a lot of adaptations were at play-you could rack up enough points in the first 2-3 exchanges to make your opponent’s comeback impossible, and if you were conversely were down after the first two exchanges, you really had to be strategic if you wanted to pull even and then win.
Oh, one other thing….doubles. Doubles counted as a pass, unless it was final exchange and both fencers were tied. One of my matches had us stuck at sudden death 5 times in a row because the judges determined that both my opponent and me made scoring contact with each other at essentially the same time. I ended up winning that one, but at the dubious expense of those 5 doubles which later mean I got this superlative: Most doubles for the morning. Yay? (the award was titled Two Corpses, One Grave, which goes hard) ACTUALLY I tied for most doubles, with the very same opponent I just mentioned and they cut the award in half:
Overall, I went 5-3 on the day, putting me at 16-18 for the year. Just one win off of a .500 (17-17) record for the year. I’m not upset. I learned a lot about myself in pursuit of this goal this year. A few things that come to mind:
It’s a big improvement over my baby-doe-on-ice first year in HEMA, 7-15-1
I used to lose the fights where I went down early. This year I came back and won a lot more of those fights
The community of fencers is incredibly supportive and I’m lucky to have friends who will freely give their time to help others
Critically watching footage of my fencing is as useful as critically listening to recordings of my clarinet playing.
Seeing/hearing improvement over time feels really good.
I’m sticking with the same goal for next year-looking forward to what I learn in 2025.
Happy New Year gang-See you in 2025!
