Stirling University 1sts v Strathclyde University 1sts
We started our day to be told the unfortunate news that one of our men couldn’t make it due to injury. This meant that it was a merry band of four that was to take on Strathclyde. A team of four, in a competition which allows teams of up to 12 people. It was going to be a strenuous day. But in classic fencing club fashion we shrugged our shoulders, made a couple of sarcastic yolo based comments and went for it anyway, and it paid off! It started with sabre, a weapon that 2 of our team had never fenced before, but fortunately it was the President's strongest so we were relying on him to prevent us getting slaughtered. Over the course of 8 of the 9 bouts we were losing 33-40. Things were not looking good, until Toby pulled it back and won it for us, that is. Through an epic display he carried us to victory in the first weapon, 43-45. This was with 2 teammates that had only fenced this weapon for a few hours against an experienced team, so pats on the back for him.
We then went on to fence epee, Strathclyde’s strongest weapon. We didn’t have a very good feeling about this, as there is by far their strongest weapon as a club, having many high level epeeists to their name. But it turns out we were just being pessimistic, as we managed to beat them in every match, with the final score of 38-45. This gave us a pretty good lead over the other team but we weren’t in the clear.
It was time for us to fence foil, and for us to win we had to get a minimum of 37 points (out of 45). By the second last match, this was looking to be a pretty big ask (I realise that we were pretty defeatist about the whole thing, but then again, it makes for the best reading when the underdog wins). We were on 27, and so had to get another 10 to win. Another 10 points in matches against two of their best was not looking very likely. Fortunately we have one of the most awkward fencers you're likely to see, so while Strathclyde kept attempting to score against him, they were coming millimetres short every time. This awkward little scamp capitalised on this, and managed to get 11 points in one sitting! Our victory was safe.
Our last fencer then went on to almost take the whole match, just losing out with an overall score of 44-45 to them (still scoring an impressive 6 against their best). But even that narrow miss wasn’t enough to get us upset, because we had won. It was like 300. Us, the few from Stirling, against the relatively many from Strathclyde (well…. not really, but a bit of dramatic license makes it sound more impressive), except in this one we didn’t all die at the end. We had a burger and a beer. Much better than an arrow to the face.
