Santa Cruz '06: Booze, Broads, and Ballestras

Currently in Earphones: Globus by Epicon, Various songs by Silly Wizard, Conan the Barbarian by Basil Poledouris

Well, it is now kinda noonish Sunday, and I've finally recovered enough to write up the events and anecdotes of Saturdays fencing tourney at Santa Cruz.

Preston was nice enough to give myself and a few other team mates a ride, and I invited him to sleep over the night before so he didn't have to get up REALLY crazy early to get to Davis from Sacramento. We all got up around 4:20ish in the AM in order to meet the other fencers at Starbucks in the U-Mall, and left from there around 5:15. The drive down was fairly uneventful, save for the fact that I got car sick in the exact same places that I did driving down last year. We even had to pull off in the same parking lot (when my stomach cried uncle) as last time. At least it was still on the right route to Campus, and we were able to get some snacks and take a bathroom break at the same gas station after I recovered.

Our car was not only the first there out of the Davisites, but also the first people there for the tourney as well. We had made excellent time and ended up hanging out outside and meeting with the rest of the team as they filtered in.

The tournament was scheduled differently than normal, perhaps for experimental reasons. The usual line up is this: The Novice Foil group gets going early, usually at something like 9 or 10, because they take the longest and should be gotten out of the way first. Then the Advanced Foil, Advanced Epee and Advanced Saber start, each in that order and each within an hour or so of each other. The idea is that there are a crapload of foilists, a mid range of Epeeists, and it doesn't matter how many Sabers there are because they go damned fast. The order was changed to Saber, Foil, then Epee for this tourney, the idea being that we'd get Saber out of the way first, which leaves more strips open for Foil and Epee. Saberists also get the lazy rap for being the guys that get to sleep in, come to the tourney halfway through, etc. etc, so I'm guessing they figured it would get their act together to have them (nearly) first as well.

In practice, it could be called a double edged sword. While the sabers did get done darn quick, there still wasn't a whole lot of open strips. And the Epeeists were sitting around with nothing to do both before they even began, which was closer to 2:00 pm than to the 12:30 (or rather, 1:00, since registration closed at 12:30) start time, and after they were finished doing pools, when there STILL weren't enough strips to go around.

I don't think the waiting around messed up my game much, but there were times when it felt like "Hurry up and go, already!" I think I prefer the original ordering in the end.

I don't have too many anecdotes in relation to my participation. I was in a pool with some nice fellows who I chatted and joked with, and we all had a fun time. The great Vinny Carbone was in my pool as well, and I was a little apprehensive about that, but I did managed to get him to La Belle before he got me. I finished the pools 2-3 (for the non fencers, I won 2 bouts and lost 3), but every bout I lost found me losing 4-5, so I had a fairly good indicator in the end: I seeded 17th out of 30. Oh, and Vinny managed to tear a hole in my old glove, which even TC was incredulous at: "That's like synthetic leather, how the heck did he do that?" I think my glove had just been through too many washings and tournaments, luckily I had a back up. Time for a new equipment run, though!

My first DE was against the cool, cool Tom Ellison. We were pretty easy about it, and he asked me to give the next guy hell if I should win (who happened to be the guy who seeded first, also a cool fellow). I was a little skeptical that I could do well against Mr. Ellison: not only does he do both Saber and Epee, but he's got all sorts of years of experience over me. We had a sad but fun bout, as we were both playing for the Davis team (and having to be in a DE with someone from your own team SUCKS, because no matter who wins, one of you is getting knocked out). Not only that, but we were right next to the Epee DE between Vinny and one of our new Epeeists Brian (a B-level fencer who shares a lot of similarities with Rock). We had a bunch of people from the Davis team cheering us all on, and we just had fun with it. I ended up beating Mr. Ellison 5-4, so at least we got more points for Davis, even if I knocked him out of the running. In my last DE I got steamrolled by Mr. Conor Bowman, the nice fellow who seeded first and who I also faced in my pools. I got one point off on him, but other than that it was pretty much no contest. Ah well.

As a team, we did damn well. Amy Chi pulled out a tied 3rd for Novice foil, which was awesome as all get out: She won her first DE...then her second....and we were all there for the third. She just racked up point after point after point, and this was coming back from a 0-5! We were all very impressed with her performance, and she walked away from it with a medal to boot. In addition, one of our new Saberists, Mike Jumper, pulled off First Place. Chris Wild, who did all three weapons, got into the top ten of each, Ande Huffman pulled some great bouts, and so on.

And now, for the anecdotes. Preston did some reffing for Advanced saber, and he cut a fine figure dressed all officially in a nice shirt-and-tie. His reffing was also of good caliber, being both professional and sticking with his calls. If there's one thing a ref shouldn't be, it is indecisive or apologetic for his calls. What he sees goes, and even if it was something else entirely, you go with his rulings. Of course you can debate a call, but that's only in the worst of situations, which, luckily, are not applicable here.

Concerning Preston and reffing, there was a certain Foilist and Saberist from the academy of Arts Fencing club by the last name of Bessell, and she was a piece of work. She clearly had the skill from competing at a national level, but man, what a personality. Not only did she huff and puff and swear (mostly quietly) when she got scored against, but she also did the "walk all the way down to the end of the strip and back to 'collect' yourself after every score against" so reminiscent of persnickety National fencers. Her hallmark trait was the habit of screaming whenever her blade managed to hit...anything. Or if she THOUGHT she hit anything. And she didn't scream once, oh no: If she did manage to get a point, she'd whip around, throw back her head and scream LOUDER. Much bleeding from the ears ensued (not literally, but it sure felt like it), and I think everyone in the venue developed a nasty twitch. The consolation we received was that all of her team mates didn't have a very good opinion of her. Concerning that bit of info, we all agreed on the car ride home that we felt it kinda unfair that we were painting her black immediately, because for all we saw, she did have some good qualities. In the end, we couldn't really decide one way or the other, after all, we'd only seen her once.

In any case, Preston had the fun of reffing a match with her in it, and a plus in her direction is that she did have legit concerns about calls, which Preston deftly and professionally dealt with ("That may very well have been the case, but that's not what I saw"). As she began to get behind in points, her swearing became more and more audible (which is, of course, a penalty for which you recieve a yellow card). Preston told her to cut it out, which resulted in her screaming a bit louder after every touch. To that, he merely replied "If you're going to do that, you might as well go back to swearing." That shut her up nicely.

The funny anecdote concerning her goes thusly: We were cheering on James M. in his second DE, and TC had developed a fun way for us to cheer. We've kind of adopted a pirate motif as a team, and whenever someone makes a hook sign with their index finger, we're all supposed to mimic the sign and let rip with a hearty "ARRRRG!" It's really fun to do that and cheer on a team mate, and it puts them in a good mood too. After James M. got a point, TC shouted "Hey, James! Do this! ::finger hook::" To that, Mr. Muehlner querulously put up his finger and we all rang out with a mighty "ARRRG!" I'm pretty sure we all caught the smile on Mr. M's usually stoic face (under his mask, even) as he turned back to the bout.

He was doing well, and Bessell was fencing a few strips over. We had let loose with a particularly good "ARRG!"s after Mr. M had scored, and in time with our outburst, and almost in defiance, we heard Bessell's trademark scream. I was standing next to Preston, and he had that look like he REALLY wanted to poke some fun at that, but his sense of decency and not wanting to cause a scene was causing his body to stiffen and to try not to smile. But despite of that, and because we'd endured plenty of accumulated screams from the girl, he let out with a very falsetto parody of her sonic assault. There was a kind of collected pause from the whole venue, and then EVERYONE burst out laughing. Preston was still kinda shocked at his own outburst and didn't immediately want to laugh and claim credit for it, but there was plenty of back slapping and handshakes going on among the Davis team who was near him. I heard afterward that her whole team fell over laughing when they heard it, and rumor has it that even Bessell herself cracked up on the strip. In the end, fun was (hopefully) had by all.

The more serious anecdote was that our star fencer, Chris Wild, went up against her in Foil DE's and, for the lack of a better phrase, schooled her. We were all on the sidelines cheering him on, and a fun by-product of calling someone by their last name led to the fun linguistic entendre of us shouting "Go Wild!" Which, of course, is exactly what we did when he evenly trounced her at the end. It was a very satisfying match.

What ended up seeming to come straight out of a movie was Mr. Wild's last foil match. After fencing bout after bout of all three weapons, he was starting to cramp up really badly. It's a rather unfortunate physiological trait he's got that he cramps like that, and believe me, we had stuffed him full of bananas and gatorade to try and counteract it. His last match ran exactly like something out of a inspirational movie. He was doing well, but after a few points, his sword arm crumpled and he clutched it in pain. After a few seconds and a concerned "you all right?" from the ref, Wild snapped back to attention and continued to fence. After a few more points, his entire upper torso was crumpling after every break in the action, and he would literally be doubled over in pain until the ref gave the "Ready, Fence!" when he'd lock back in and fence like a madman. I swear, I and every other team mate out there were itching to call "THROW IN THE TOWL!!" and run to his assistance, because it was just getting too painful to watch. After it all, we laid him out on the floor and massaged and stretched his poor muscles, but man, that's drama you can't get anywhere else!

After the tourney, we all filtered out and met at a pub for some late night socializing, and although I was feelin' a bit anti-social at the beginning, I warmed up and chatted amiably as the night went on (and no, not because I had anything to drink). The last little snag we visited upon was during the drive back, when Preston and I missed the exit from 880 north onto 680, and we started heading towards the bay. The ironic thing was that I could probably have navigated back to Davis from the point where we figured out that we had missed the merge, seeing that we were in the east bay and I was familiar with 880. However, we did turn back and managed to find the right exit (which was exactly the same shape I had imagined would be there for the traffic direction we were on). Needless to say we got back without too much of a hitch after that.

We ended up getting back in to Davis around midnight, though we had to go drop off our passengers and I chatted a bit with Preston before hitting the sack around 1:45. I'm very thankful that Daylight savings is today, because that extra hour of sleep was VERY much needed.

And that's about it. If I think of any more anecdotes I'll be sure to add them in later.

Enough. More Later,
- James