Fencing - Part 1
May. 3rd, 2013 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redfiona99It will be nice to have a weekend off from fencing, because I love it but I fenced both days on the last two weekends.
Disaster 1 - despite having to get up at 5 in the morning on Saturday (20/04), I only managed to get to sleep at 2 am. Bloody insomnia.
Amazingly I woke easily when my alarm went off at 5. That was the highlight of my Saturday. Which might tell you how shitty the rest of it was.
Got on the train to Nottingham, barely anyone else was on it so I had plenty of space to put my kit.
Got to the venue, just in time to help D (of whom lots has been written) carry kit in. Not the end of the world and a nice warm up. It's after that that it all went to Hell.
Disaster 2 - D, despite being team captain, leaves for another competition. Leaving me in charge with no warning. As you can imagine, panic ensued until I could find someone to give the job to. The wonderful M took over.
Disaster 3 - There were only 2 men's epeeists. It's supposed to be a team of 3.
Disaster 4 - There was only 1 women's epeeist. It's supposed to be a team of 4.
The half disaster - my team-mates in the women's foil. It's not their fault that they're 18 and stroppy. I blame their coaches (no, really, everyone coached by their coaches is like this. I think it's to try to convey to the ref that you know what you're doing so they should give the point their way. It doesn't always work. Unfortunately, it works often enough to be worth it). But it's a bit wearing being on a team with them and having to apologise to the ref and your opponents. (Yes, that was how badly they were behaving.) Part of the problem is, and the quote is from another foilist, that they both want to be the prima ballerina. This is not to say they're not good, they're both better than me (although I am working on it) but they're not as good as they think they are so when they yell at the ref for getting it wrong, I do want to say "I know what you were trying to do, and so does the ref, but you didn't actually do it."
The other two foilists decided they'd help A the epeeist by fencing epee. Which totally threw their foil off.
Disaster 5 - Foilists throwing constant strops because we're losing.
Now, I am by some way the worst foilist on our team, but then again in the first three matches, I was the only one on both sides with no national stripes so this should not be a surprise to anyone. If R who had taken over the team selection had just told me I was being benched, I could have coped. I am not one of the 18 year old horrors, I'm 28 and have achieved a certain amount of realism on the topic of my abilities but no, he decides to come up with a lie to spare my feelings. I loathe being lied to more than I can possibly express and due to the two compulsive liars in my family I have a solid bullshit detector.
Disaster 6 - I got subbed off a foil team for an epeeist. The excuse was "[real name redacted], you're looking tired."
Disaster 7 - Despite this I still had to ref. And then I got chased off an epee match for not being able to ref! Which is almost impossible. Because I'd had a shitty day I basically told them "whatever" and they got themselves another ref. The day after epeeist I told me that the South East fencer who'd been so outstandingly obnoxious did it to everyone.
I then have to ref foil. Needless to say, my confidence was shot (reffing is definitely a confidence thing) so I couldn't but they were nice about it so I got them another ref.
I got subbed back into foil, and won my only match of the day.
Disaster 8 - One of the men's sabreurs was taken to hospital with a concussion. We didn't have a spare.
So the first day is over and I'm already in a foul mood when the DT comes over and says:
Disaster 9 - Because the 2 foilists were signed on as foilists, they have to void their first fight of every round of epee. Thankfully it didn't change any of the results since they'd lost them all but ... it really was the last thing everyone needed.
I was not far from jacking it all in and feigning injury so I wouldn't have to turn up the next day. Thankfully, an evening meal and a superb qualifying session from both my beloved Espargaro boys set me right.
This was at least in part because we managed to fill up the teams. H came down so I got moved to epee for the day. H is a much better foilist than me, and I told D to ask her first. He told me he had but that she couldn't do it. Of course, when I asked her, it turns out he hadn't asked. I'm mildly less furious than I ought to be because it means he owes me a favour that I intend to call in.
I did no worse in epee than I did at foil, I even got a hit on Caitlin Chang who is ~ 4th in the country. Combined services left their usual bruises. They're all lovely but they've yet to grasp that you don't have to kill your opponent. They're also the team that concussed our sabreur.
In the end, despite everything, West Midlands didn't come last. Somehow, we were 6th out of 9. No, I have no idea either.
Disaster 1 - despite having to get up at 5 in the morning on Saturday (20/04), I only managed to get to sleep at 2 am. Bloody insomnia.
Amazingly I woke easily when my alarm went off at 5. That was the highlight of my Saturday. Which might tell you how shitty the rest of it was.
Got on the train to Nottingham, barely anyone else was on it so I had plenty of space to put my kit.
Got to the venue, just in time to help D (of whom lots has been written) carry kit in. Not the end of the world and a nice warm up. It's after that that it all went to Hell.
Disaster 2 - D, despite being team captain, leaves for another competition. Leaving me in charge with no warning. As you can imagine, panic ensued until I could find someone to give the job to. The wonderful M took over.
Disaster 3 - There were only 2 men's epeeists. It's supposed to be a team of 3.
Disaster 4 - There was only 1 women's epeeist. It's supposed to be a team of 4.
The half disaster - my team-mates in the women's foil. It's not their fault that they're 18 and stroppy. I blame their coaches (no, really, everyone coached by their coaches is like this. I think it's to try to convey to the ref that you know what you're doing so they should give the point their way. It doesn't always work. Unfortunately, it works often enough to be worth it). But it's a bit wearing being on a team with them and having to apologise to the ref and your opponents. (Yes, that was how badly they were behaving.) Part of the problem is, and the quote is from another foilist, that they both want to be the prima ballerina. This is not to say they're not good, they're both better than me (although I am working on it) but they're not as good as they think they are so when they yell at the ref for getting it wrong, I do want to say "I know what you were trying to do, and so does the ref, but you didn't actually do it."
The other two foilists decided they'd help A the epeeist by fencing epee. Which totally threw their foil off.
Disaster 5 - Foilists throwing constant strops because we're losing.
Now, I am by some way the worst foilist on our team, but then again in the first three matches, I was the only one on both sides with no national stripes so this should not be a surprise to anyone. If R who had taken over the team selection had just told me I was being benched, I could have coped. I am not one of the 18 year old horrors, I'm 28 and have achieved a certain amount of realism on the topic of my abilities but no, he decides to come up with a lie to spare my feelings. I loathe being lied to more than I can possibly express and due to the two compulsive liars in my family I have a solid bullshit detector.
Disaster 6 - I got subbed off a foil team for an epeeist. The excuse was "[real name redacted], you're looking tired."
Disaster 7 - Despite this I still had to ref. And then I got chased off an epee match for not being able to ref! Which is almost impossible. Because I'd had a shitty day I basically told them "whatever" and they got themselves another ref. The day after epeeist I told me that the South East fencer who'd been so outstandingly obnoxious did it to everyone.
I then have to ref foil. Needless to say, my confidence was shot (reffing is definitely a confidence thing) so I couldn't but they were nice about it so I got them another ref.
I got subbed back into foil, and won my only match of the day.
Disaster 8 - One of the men's sabreurs was taken to hospital with a concussion. We didn't have a spare.
So the first day is over and I'm already in a foul mood when the DT comes over and says:
Disaster 9 - Because the 2 foilists were signed on as foilists, they have to void their first fight of every round of epee. Thankfully it didn't change any of the results since they'd lost them all but ... it really was the last thing everyone needed.
I was not far from jacking it all in and feigning injury so I wouldn't have to turn up the next day. Thankfully, an evening meal and a superb qualifying session from both my beloved Espargaro boys set me right.
This was at least in part because we managed to fill up the teams. H came down so I got moved to epee for the day. H is a much better foilist than me, and I told D to ask her first. He told me he had but that she couldn't do it. Of course, when I asked her, it turns out he hadn't asked. I'm mildly less furious than I ought to be because it means he owes me a favour that I intend to call in.
I did no worse in epee than I did at foil, I even got a hit on Caitlin Chang who is ~ 4th in the country. Combined services left their usual bruises. They're all lovely but they've yet to grasp that you don't have to kill your opponent. They're also the team that concussed our sabreur.
In the end, despite everything, West Midlands didn't come last. Somehow, we were 6th out of 9. No, I have no idea either.
