Fernwood Sword Clubs James Rutherford & Ed Howlett have a weekend to remember
This has been a great three days of fencing (with a rare photo attached of James and Ed in the same photo - and smiling, too) .
Ed had his first GB Junior (U20) international on Friday in London at the Eden Cup. There were 198 fencers and no easy poules and Ed certainly didn't have one, with fencers up to 3 years older in there. He kicked off with a 5-3 win over Rosario Vella of Germany, followed by a 2-5 loss against Italian, Pietro Velluti - the silver medal winner last year. A 5-2 win over Serb, Mihaly Mero followed. He then went 4-3 against Sean Grant, 4th in the Canadian senior rankings, but didn't quite get his distance right for the last two hits, losing out 4-5. A disappointing 0-5 against Polish senior squad fencer Ludwik De Bazelaire ensued. Ed lost out 3-5 in his final fight to left handed Bulgarian, Vichko Nikolov, but was entitled to feel cross about some very conservative calls of "together" where Ed thought it was his attack. The margins were very narrow, with just a couple of points separating Ed's V2D4 from V4D2, which would have put him in a very good position. There was a 30% cut in this competition, but Ed made it through. 7 of the 20 GB fencers didn't. A measure of the difficulty of the competition was that Ed then had to face Kim Seytor, from France, one of the top cadets in the world, in L256. As well as a height advantage, he did the simple things very well and Ed certainly learnt a lot from fencing him, coming out with a 6-15 loss. Ed finished 135th, 11th amongst the GB fencers, equal with the 4th ranked GB junior. With another 3 years as a junior after the end of this season, this competition was a fantastic learning opportunity.
We then had the Cadet Winton at Millfield School in Somerset over the weekend, with Ed and James representing the East Midlands against 9 other regions - each putting forward a team from each weapon, boys and girls, to U18 level. Each match consisted of 9 fights, with 3 fencers on each team. The East Midland men's foil team's 3rd fencer alternated between 2 development level fencers, who were really there to learn. They weren't expected to win any fights (and they didn't), so James and Ed could only drop one fight between them for East Midlands to win the match as a whole. A tough prospect.
First up was South West, with 3 comfortable wins by each of Ed and James, so a 6-3 win. The result and margins were similar against Southern and then Wales. The evening fights were a tougher proposition. The boys had a meltdown against North West, with only Ed winning a fight. They got themselves very wound up by the refereeing, which certainly didn't help against a strong team........There was almost another loss against Yorkshire. Ed was so pumped up after the North West match that he rushed his attacks in one fight and lost 1-5 - but won the other two. James won his first two. It reached 4-4 in the final decider. James got the hit, slid on his knees along the piste in celebration and badly grazed himself.... Worth it for a 5-4 win. Ed finished the day with very bad blisters on his left big toe, so both boys were in the wars for the second day.
The next day started well with a 6-3 win against South East region. Against London, Ed won his first fight comfortably, then was losing his second to an awkward left hander with a slippery lightweight lame 1-4 - he brought it back to 4-4 but lost the last hit. He stepped up a gear and won his last fight 5-0. James won his first two fights and using what Ed had learnt in his fight, beat the left hander 5-3. A 5-4 win. The penultimate match was a comfortable 6-3 win over West Midlands. The final match was against a strong Eastern region team. Ed stepped up about 3 gears and beat GB squad member Dan Summerfield 5-0. Then South African fencer Luca Valleti 5-0. Then Albert Chambers, a good left hander, 5-0. James lost 3-5 to Dan, then beat Luca. He had to win his last fight against Albert - a 5-3 win and a 5-4 match victory. The boys won 8 from 9 matches and finished 2nd behind the strong North West team, each winning 23 fights out of 27. A fantastic weekend's fencing and a great display of teamwork.
In other news, the boys are in line for selection for the GB U17 team for Pisa in January; Ed's senior ranking for December is 30th - the highest he's achieved so far; and, finally, Ed was a runner up for Junior Sportsperson of the Year in the Newark and Sherwood District Sports Awards.
The next competition is an U20 BRC at the Manchester Fencing Centre on 7th January.