Sharon Jones reports
This was another busy weekend. Two of our younger fencers, Ethan Dakin and Arthur Eakin were in action at the Leon Paul Junior Series in Bath.
Ethan, in U11 men's foil, took bronze, although he was somewhat frustrated by the refereeing in his semi final match. Ethan has already secured first place in the series this year, so his remaining matches are essentially for development.
Meanwhile Arthur is fencing as a younger year fencer in U13 men's foil, so is using this year as a development year. He won 2 and lost 3 of his poule fights and, ranked 17th after the poules, was unfortunate to meet 16th ranked Josh Hemmings who used his considerable height advantage to make the difference and went on to win a silver medal.
Ed Howlett was fencing in the Welsh Open on Saturday. He won all his poule fights and was ranked 2nd for the DEs. He had a bye in L128 and following a 15-3 win over Geert Van Arsen in L64, had a distinctly tough run in. He won his L32 fight against strong Latvian Edgar Kursiss 15-7, having gone a stunning 10-0 up. He then beat Rob Williams (former GB U20) 15-6. (Rob is a current University College London fencer so, with his King's hat on, Ed was particularly pleased with that win). Ed was quite tired by then (6am start from home) and faced Dan Robinson (ex GB Senior and England Senior Commonwealth medallist). Ed's initial reconnaissance was not quite cautious enough and he went 0-4 down. After that, he was chasing and while he then matched Dan hit for hit, he wasn't able to recover the deficit and went out 10-15. Ed finished 5th from over 70 fencers.
