How to Watch Fencing – Saber (From Fencing Masters 2012)

NYC World Cup of Fencing: Day 1 Summary and Match-Ups Set For Team USA for Day 2!

On the men’s side, Jeff Spear (5-1) and Tim Morehouse (6-0) went directly out of the pools ranked 5th and 15th respectively.  Ben Igoe (5-1), Mike Etropolski (5-1), Daryl Homer (3-3) and Avery Zuck (2-4) advance through DEs to the 64 as well.

NY World Cup Men’s Pools Flight 3: Tim Morehouse advanced to the 64, 6-0. U.S. results: James Williams (4-2), Aleksander Ochocki (4-2), Andrew Fischl (4-2), Eric Arzoian (4-2), Evan Prochniak (3-3), Adrian Bak (3-3), John Hallsten (2-4), Zackery Brown (2-4), Rienzi Gokea (2-4), Charles Copti (2-4), Isaac Buchwald (2-4), Adam Mandel (2-4), Dennis Dukhalov (2-4), Peter Pak (1-5) & Teddy Weller (1-5)

180+ fencers and 20+ countries.  It was quite a battle ROYAL!

On the women’s side, Daria Schneider, Monica Aksamit, Sage Palmedo, Kamali Thompson and Skyla Powers made it into table of 64. They will join Mariel Zagunis, Ibtihaj Muhammad and Dagmara Wozniak tomorrow!

Day 2 Match Ups for Men and Women: 
http://usfencing.org/events/7135

NEW YORK WORLD CUP OF FENCING BEGINS TOMORROW!

Here we go! GO TEAM USA! Wish us LUCK!

PRESS RELEASE ON EVENT:

From June 24 to June 26, 2010,  the New York Athletic Club will partner with the US Fencing Association and the World Fencing Federation, to host one of only ten international Olympic Qualification events for London 2012.    All matches will be held at the New York Athletic Club’s venerable location on Central Park South.

Two-time Olympic gold medalist and the top ranked fencer in the world Mariel Zagunis, 2008 Olympic silver medalists James Williams and Tim Morehouse, and the rest of the US team will compete for spots on the 2012 US Olympic Team.  The competition will also feature hundreds of the best fencers in the world and Olympic hopefuls from over 30 countries for individual and team qualification events.  This is the first time a fencing world cup will be held at the New York Athletic Club since the 1980s and is the first international Olympic qualification event for any sport ever to be held at the club.

FOR MORE INFO: NYAC.Fencing.Club@gmail.com
or at US Fencing Website: www.usfencing.org  

Jeff Spear Defeats World Medalist Cosmin Hanceanu at Madrid Saber World Cup, USA Finishes 12th in Team Competition (USfencing.org)

By Nicole Jomantes, www.usfencing.org

Madrid, Spain – Jeff Spear (Wyantskill, N.Y.) earned his first top-32 finish at a World Cup this year in Madrid where he placed 24^th on Saturday.

Spear advanced to the table of 64 after winning six straight bouts in the pools during preliminary competition on Friday.

In the table of 64, Spear won his first bout against 2010 Senior World medalist Cosmin Hanceanu (ROU), 15-13.

Read Whole Article:

http://usfencing.org/news/2011/05/17/jeff-spear-defeats-world-medalist-cosmin-hanceanu-at-madrid-saber-world-cup-usa-finishes-12th-in-team-competition/42341

Team USA Men’s Saber 6th Place at Moscow World Cup

Moscow, Russia — In the final world cup before Olympic qualification kicks off, team USA men’s saber finished 6th.     The team, consisting of Tim Morehouse, James Williams, Daryl Homer and Jeff Spear, defeated Ukraine 45-43 to advance to the top-8, before falling to Italy to make the top-4, 45-38.   The team then defeated Olympic zonal rival Canada 45-42 in a very tough match.   The day ended with a loss to Romania and a 6th place finish.

James Williams followed up on his top-8 performance in the individual with strong fencing in the team, although against Canada he turned his ankle badly and was forced to the bench for the final round.

The next time team USA takes the piste at a world cup at the end of April it will count for London 2012 qualification!   Will be a tough battle for the team, but looking forward to the challenge.   The next competition is USA National Championships in mid-April.

** A big change will also be announced soon to the  USA Olympic qualification system for the London 2012 team…more to come on this!

** Ben Igoe was home resting after surgery on his ankle.  He will be back in action at USA national championships.

Not Cool Fencing Picture of the Day: Saber fencers on Crutches…

Our team has been a bit beaten up this year…

National team member Ben Igoe (left) just had some minor surgery on his foot to remove some bone spurs.  He’ll be missing the Moscow World Cup this weekend as a result, but will be back for Nationals.  Jeff Spear, ranked #5 in the USA, had some bone chips that needed healing.  He will be competing this weekend in Moscow…

7 USA Fencers Advance at Trofeo Luxardo Men’s Saber World Cup

Padua, Italy — The largest men’s saber world cup in 8 years (160+ fencers) saw 7 of the 12 team USA men’s saber fencers advance on day 1.    Tim Morehouse (6-0) and Jeff Spear (5-1) advanced directly from the pools to the 64 by finishing in the top-16.   Daryl Homer (4-1), Ben Igoe (4-2), James Williams (4-2), Avery Zuck (4-2) and Mike Etropolski (3-3) all advanced out of the pools and defeated strong opponents to in direct elimination matches to advance.

In the elimination matches to make top-64, Ben Igoe beat Pundyk (UKR) 15-9, James Williams defeated Boyko (UKR)15-14 , Daryl Homer defeated Mokretsov (RUS)  (15-12), Mike Etropolski defeated Gelatanu (ROM) 15-13 and Avery Zuck defeated Mayer (CAN) 15-10.

Andrew Fischl, John Jalesky and Oleg Ochocki failed to advanced from the pools and Dan Bak fell in his second elimination match to advance.

Team USA fences again in the top-64 tomorrow.   In the first round, Ben Igoe faces off against Montano (ITA), Homer fencers Decsi (HUN), Williams fences Kim (KOR), Tim Morehouse fences Hartung (GER), Jeff Spear fences Riccadeli (ITA),  Mike Etropolski fences Tarrantino (ITA) and Avery Zuck fences Kovalev (RUS).

WISH US LUCK!

Team USA Men’s Saber in Italy for World Cup #2

We’ve just arrived in Padua, Italy for the second world cup of the season.

12 USA men’s saber fencers will be competing.  I’ll be posting results as best I can from here!

The competition starts tomorrow with pools and DEs to the top-64.  There will be a team event on Sunday.

World Cup Circuit #1 | Plovdiv, Bulgaria Starts Tomorrow

The 2011 International men’s saber Fencing Season kicks off tomorrow morning with the start of the world cups in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Team USA has 7 fencers here:  Daryl Homer, Tim Morehouse, James Williams, Ben Igoe, Dan Bak, Jeff Spear and Mike Etropolski along with coach Yury Gelman.  Andrew Fischl was a last minute scratch after he injured his knee last week.

This season’s schedule is different from the past.  First, there will be only 8 international senior tournaments in each weapon.  In the past, men’s saber had 14-15 world cups with varying strengths.   With only 8, every country will attend (should) each world cup, making for no easy competitions.

The Plovdiv, Bulgaria World Cup is also the first of 3 grand prix tournaments.  They will count as 1.5 of a regular world cup.   Meaning, they will award more points for Grand Prix events.

Team events are now help with the “regular” world cups.  Countries may only send 8 fencers to a grand prix and 12 to a “regular” world cup.   However, because most countries have more than 8 strong fencers, and because of the reduced numbers, it should mean that the “regular” world cups will likely be stronger and larger than the Grand Prix ones.

Will post results from day tomorrow.  There are 135 total competitors.   119 compete tomorrow with pools and preliminaries for 48 spots into the second day of 64.

Fencing Masters NYC: My Review and What’s Next

The last few weeks since Fencing Masters NYC I’ve spent closing things out as well as beginning practice for this upcoming season, but I wanted to take some time to give a quick review of how I think things went and to discuss what’s ahead…

To put it into perspective, our mission was to prove that fencing has a large enough fan-base to hold large scale events, that fencing CAN (And Should!) be on TV in the USA, to create a quality platform for the sport that corporate sponsors would be interested in supporting and to help financially support Olympic hopefuls.

Overall Grade: B+/A-

The Good:

• We proved that there is a market for Fencing: 1800+ people attended, the majority of which had a good time watching our great sport
• Fencing was on TV in the USA! And, can easily do it again and do so on a national scale with the right kind of support behind it
• Sponsors ARE Interested in our sport: Nike, Fortress Financial, BNP Paribas, BisroMD Sport and others provided product, money and other support for the event
• Good Local Media Exposure/Some National:We had appearances on 4 local NY mornings shows, Bloomberg news, a photo shoot with V Man magazine, Shape Magazine and Access Hollywood did write ups, Sports Business Journal and others here and there.
• Athletes Got money! When all is said and done we will have provided over 20k to athletes in a sport where athlete’s don’t get a lot of financial support
  
• A Track Record to Build On: Perhaps most importantly, we now will have some great data, pictures, videos and marketing materials to approach sponsors for additional funds in future years to to the even.
• The Kids! 2 schools are starting after-school fencing programs thanks to some of the assemblies we did in promotion of the event.  Seeing so many young kids at the event enjoying themselves was the most inspiring part for me and hopefully we’ll see more people starting to fence as a result!

Things to Improve:

• Event Check-in: We had  close to 400 walk-ups and could have done a better job getting everyone in at the start of the event (as a side-note, it was kind of cool to have a line down the block for a fencing tournament!)
• Stage Production: We did the event on a shoe-string budget so there were things we would have done with the stage which would have made it look better for TV.  I think for the  in-person crowd with the replay-screens, FM Logo it looked good.
• Television Production: with all the organization that went into pulling off the event, selling tickets, we could have done a better job with the TV side of the production.  I view this year’s broadcast as a starting point. Something to build on.  Clear things we can do better and will!
• Organization of the Expo: Jeff Spear did an amazing job running the Expo Championship portion, but we could have been more organized directing people to the various stations and understanding the number of stations, where they should be etc.

Thoughts For Moving Forward:

• I’d like to do the event again, but with the London 2012 Olympics closing fast, my #1 priority will (and has been) training and I want to make sure it won’t take away from my training/competing.

• Over the Next 3 months, I will be updating our sponsorship/marketing packets with data, pictures etc. from the event and approaching sponsors about funding for 2011.  If I can get additional funds from sponsors to take some of the financial stress off of doing the event again then it will likely happen again.  This time around, I assumed most of the financial risk and while this was worth it to get it off the ground, it is not sustainable for the long term.

• Fencing in the USA: HAS AN UNBELIEVABLE POTENTIAL FOR GROWTH RIGHT NOW!  The iron is hot, we have an amazing community, new clubs/school programs opening all the time, great athletes like Mariel Zagunis, young/amazing foil team etc.  We can be something more, but we must have a BIG VISION and EXECUTE! We will grow as big as we believe we can grow. Period.

Things to Add/Change/Goals (Just thinking out loud!)

• Adding 2 more women saber fencers so we can do an expo tournament for the women’s saber fencers
• Provide cash prizes to “up the ante” of the fencing
• More National Television and Media Coverage
• Nationally Televised

Overall:
Grade, B+/A-…Inaugural event and one in a sport that hasn’t had events like this in our country. We got fencing on TV for the first time since 1980s.  Things to improve, but great starting point!

Thanks to everyone for your support! Please feel free to send thoughts/comments/ideas to me! Always welcomed!