DFC "No Reason" social event
Yesterday we held our first ever, "No Reason" club social and tournament. It is an opportunity for fencers of all classes to get together, meet, mingle, and fence one another. The way "no reason" works is this. You roll dice, in this case, a giant wooden D4 created by our own talented Jim, and to his credit, he did not weight them in his favor. On the face of the dice are written either "foil" , "epee", or "saber". What you roll is what you fence.
The amazing social aspect of all this is that often times a student might roll something they have never fenced before. When that happens we dress them up, show them how to hold the weapon, give them a brief rundown of the rules and just let them go for it. They have fun trying something new, and it is just as likely their opponent is at a disadvantage as well.
We ran repercharge, which is a fancy fencing word for double elimination. The top finishers won a little pirate or ninja rubber ducky. Afterwards we all went to the park and had a really nice covered dish dinner.
The only little issue the whole day was that going into the event I knew that our club didn't have a saber lame in my size. There are several good reasons for it. For instance, I have no business competing in saber with my heat management issues. I should instead of expecting the club to buy me a lame, choose to lose enough weight to fit into the size 48 lame we have. So, knowing about the lame thing I made a fair proclamation, anyone who rolled saber and was fencing me got an automatic win. A few stated that if that happened they would just re-roll, they wanted to fence. Most of them were excited about the 33% chance of winning a bout without fencing it.
Lots of saber was fenced yesterday, but no one rolled saber against me. I came out second in pools, and won the tournament defeating Trevor in epee. The truth is, I needed that win. It was for fun, it was with friends, but I had never actually won before and it was a good safe place to see what that felt like.
What does it feel like? It feels like sore muscles, tiredness, and bruising, (even on my back). But the little pirate ducky is cute. I also learned something very important about myself. Yes infact the uniform does make me look fat...damn it. (even though I got the touch)
