Encinitas Fencing Academy hosted the first San Diego Cup event for Youth and Junior Epee last Saturday on October 28th. An astounding 64 fencers participated across 5 events, including several EFA fencers for whom this was their first competition.
Ryan Weissman, in his first official competition, fenced an age category up in participating in the Y14 event in the morning. He gave a great effort that earned him 2 victories in his pool, and a close DE bout in the first round. It turned out to be a warm up for the Y12 event, which was much larger. Thinking on improvements to make from the previous event, Ryan earned 3 wins in the pool, with 2 close defeats. This record was good enough for a bye out of the first round of DE’s, and another close match with the eventual winner of the tournament. This is the kind of improvement we like to see at EFA, and we are proud of Ryan’s performance in his first tournament!
Our next round of competitors fenced in the very competitive Mixed Juniors event. Eowyn Acres fenced a Junior-category event for the first time, Ilyssa Freiburger fenced in a competition for the first time, and Roark Harris began his campaign for the San Diego Junior Men’s Epee cup. Eowyn showed off all the skills she has been tirelessly working on in practice in the pool round: she earned only 1 victory, but had three 4-5 losses, results that can be turned around with some focus at practice.
Roark’s goal of working on his intensity was rewarded with two decisive victories in pools (5-1, 5-2), and a close DE match. Ilyssa was able to secure a victory in the pool round, as well as a 4-5 defeat against the eventual 3rd-place finisher. We are very proud of these efforts at EFA! All of our fencers were able to craft opportunities to succeed; even though the results were not favorable, being able to put themselves in this situation means that they will have many more chances to earn better results in the future. We look forward to great things from them all.
An enormous “THANK YOU!” to all who participated in this tournament, and those who helped make the tournament successful, including our Junior fencers who reffed (Roark Harris, Eowyn Acres, and Alex Soderberg), and our volunteers (Allison Chan and Marley Pilkinton).
All participants earned points towards the San Diego Cup standings. Full results can be seen at AskFRED. EFA will be hosting another Youth/Junior Cup event on December 2nd.
