This past Saturday the fencing team traveled to Kernersville NC to compete in their conference individuals. With our team generally placing in the middle I expected individual performance to be about the same but the final results absolutely blew away my expectations.
Hargrave was able to enter seven fencers, giving us a bit of an advantage in the numbers game and getting us a fencer in each of the five seed pools, giving everybody the opportunity to go cheer on teammates and help with some advice and encouragement.
From the seed pools, they moved to a direct elimination tableau. Without a full 32 fencers in the competition Ellis, Scott, and Wadsworth were all placed high enough to earn a bye to the second round and were joined by Eastman who initially faced off against Silva, and Pennington. Shaw, was unfortunately knocked out early by a particularly difficult opponent.
Our 4 who began in the top 10 were able to maintain this through direct eliminations and were joined by fencers from championship teams and some with national ratings. This is a huge accomplishment for such a new team!
Please congratulate the following on their accomplishments if you see them, particularly cadet Wadsworth for making it to the semi-finals!
Wadworth – 4th
Scott – 5th
Ellis – 9th
Eastman – 10th
Pennington – 13th
Shaw – 24th
Silva – 25th
Our next competition is on February 8 in Chapel Hill where the Varsity team will compete in team states. Each fencer has identified areas they want to work on for the next two weeks and we hope to keep this momentum going.
