Allison Chan and Coach David “Lucky” Polakoski traveled to Anaheim to represent Encinitas Fencing Academy at the North American Cup event last weekend. Both performed excellently!
The tournament was thrown into disarray due to a USA Fencing equipment truck flipping over on the way to Anaheim, while another was stopped at scales for being overweight. Though some strips had made it to the venue on Thursday the organizers were waiting until roughly 4 pm on Friday – the first day of competition - for more than half of their gear to show up, causing significant delays to the scheduled events.
Allison competed in the Division II Women’s Epee event, her first time competing in a division-based tournament. Her primary goals for the event were to have fun and take information back to the club for practice. Her secondary goals were to implement a new warmup strategy from practice. She lost her first match 1-5, but found that her warmup strategy was very effective with a small tweak: She ended the pools with a 5-1 record, securing a bye in the round of 128. She handily won her first DE bout, but was eliminated in the round of 32. She ended the day 18th of 105 fencers, a spectacular showing!
Coach Lucky competed in the Division I Men’s Epee event, which was delayed from 2 pm to roughly 7 pm. His goals for the competition were to be able to appreciate positive performance (rather than focusing on a potentially negative result), as well as integrating some new techniques to his overall game. At the end of a competitive pool, Coach Lucky emerged with a 4-2 record, the best in the pool with indicators. This record was good enough to secure a bye out of the first round of DE’s. His bout in the second round went down to the wire: Lucky ran behind at 1-6 in the first period, turned it around to 13-10 by the end of the second period, but his opponent rallied to finish the bout 15-13. Coach Lucky had many positive takeaways from the day, and hopes to carry the momentum forward to the December NAC in Portland, OR.
We are thrilled that our fencers were able to compete and take away so much from the competition in regards to both their personal goals and their results. Full results can be found at USFencing. Congrats all and good luck at the next competition!
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