Team Event at Zonals

I am back in the US Despite being extremely groggy earlier from my very early flight from Mexico. The team event went okay. We beat all the teams we were supposed to and lost to Canada. In the end we took home a bronze medal.

Team events are so different than individual events. It is impossible to tell whether a fencer will be good fencing team even knowing their individual skill. In addition it takes awhile for the team members and coach to get comfortable with each other to trust each other.

We were fortunate this time. Soren Thompson (2004 Olympian) and Benji Ungar (2007 World Team Member) couldnt make it so Eric Hansen came. Eric is an accomplished fencer who has now switched over to coaching more. We were excited to have him back on the team after a couple of years. We had all fenced with him on team before the 2004 games.

I think the 3 most important lessons from the team event are: learning to fence team takes time, often the less experienced fencer can give you the most trouble, and even if the odds are 90 percent in your favor you still lose one in ten.

In the final bout for bronze we let the top Junior Jonathan Yergler fence. He has done well domestically and is just starting his international career. Fencing Argentina he seemed to struggle. The first instinct is to pull him out. However the team agreed that it was better to let him work out the kinks. Cody and I were both cofident that we cold keep the match close enough that I would have ample room to win in the end. Yergler felt that he learned a number of things and was thankful that we left him in. I think with time he could be a very good fencer.

One of the things that fencing in the NCAA tournaments was that less experienced fencers dont react the way one should. This can really mess people up. I have been caught in it a number of times myself. Fencing the Domincan Republic I needed to exercise these lessons. The domincans are very physical but lack the international experience. If you dont pay attention you can quickly lose. I find that it is best to do simple strong actions to the body with less experienced fencers. If they change and simple doesnt work anymore then move on to something more complicated.

In our bout against Canada we fell behind early but slowly tied it towards the end. Being tied in the second to last bout I felt we identified a mismatch. Cody was fencing little Igor from Canada. I think 9 out of ten times Cody would have scored many single lights. However for some reason was a little off and fell behind. Eventually finding his groove he made some touches back but ran out of time. Being behind 3 touches I did my best but was unable to make up ground against Tigram. While I still believe this to be the right decision some people will always second guess. As Patton said "A good plan today, is better than a perfect plan tomorrow."