Top weekend for young Fernwood Sword Club member
The standout performance of the weekend was from our regular guest fencer, Ethan Dakin. From a decent field of 13 fencers, Ethan won the gold medal in the U11 Leon Paul Junior Series competition in Truro, Cornwall. Following a good performance in the poules, demonstrating a tidy technique, he battled through to beat Henry Stirling of Sussex House prep school in London in the semi final. There was some controversy as at 9-7 up to Ethan, it was discovered that the scoring both had been set to sabre, meaning that hits from the side of the foil had been counted. Both boys sportingly agreed to carry on and Ethan won through to the final, where he beat successful local favourite, Arlo Bason of Roselyon School, to take the gold.
Meanwhile, Ed was competing in the Merseyside Open in Liverpool. He had a storming start, dropping only 2 points in his first poule, winning 5-0 against sparring partner and GB veteran Mike McKay of Sheffield Buccaneers, Max Kovats of Academy in London, Gabriel Steele of Salle Holyrood in Edinburgh and Chris Williams of Wrekin Sword. He dropped 2 points in his last match against Joe Banks of Saxon in London. Ed finished as equal 1st seed for the second round. However, his fantastic performance worked against him. Bizarrely, not only did the top two seeds have the only two smaller poules of 5 rather than 6, but Ed's small poule of 5 contained 3 of the top 5 seeds in the competition (including Ed). He fenced well to beat Tom Corlett (GB 17th ranked) of ZFW in London 5-3. He had 5-1 victories over Joe Kerr of Cocks Moors Wood and Oliver Massey of Aberystwyth, but couldn't quite get over the line with a 3-5 defeat to 19th GB ranked Charlie Broughton of Salle Holyrood. The loss and the small poule meant Ed dropped down to 10th for the DEs. He had a bye in L128 and polished off Joe Kerr in L64 with a 15-6 victory. He had a potentially difficult L32 fight against GB junior James Page of Fencers Club London in L32 - while he matched scores until midway through the match, Ed was a little bit off his usual pace in terms of his intensity and footwork and fell to a 9-15 defeat. He finished 19th from 76 fencers.