A great weekend
We have an excellent weekend of results to report, plus a wider catch up due to holidays.
Ethan Dakin won the final event in the 2019 U12 Youth Series in Liverpool yesterday, notching up his third gold in the Series and clinching the overall title. It wasn't entirely smooth sailing as Ethan dropped poule matches to Indigo Zaffino of Barnsley Fencing and Sheffield Buccaneers (in a mixed poule) and to Edward Thompson of Dragon Fencing. However, he beat Edward convincingly in the final to clinch the gold.
Ed Howlett was back to sparkling form in the GB U23 Championships yesterday, finishing in 6th place from 76 fencers, despite suffering from a sickness bug. He confidently started his first poule match winning the hit with a point in line and went on to win all of his poule matches, putting him in 7th place for the DEs. He eased to a 15-9 victory over ZFW clubmate Dylan Daniel in L64. Unfortunately Ed and University of Nottingham fencer and guest Fernwood coach, Alexander Jones, had to face each other in L32. Ed won out 15-11. He then had a very hairy 15-14 win over another ZFW fencer, Dario Stenbeck-Schiavo to go through to L8. Despite being tired after the L16 match, he put in a very physical shift against GB senior and eventual silver medallist Isaac Jolley but couldn't come through, going out 10-15. Ed has been selected for the GB squad to fence in the U20 international Eden Cup in London on 2nd November.
Finally, Arthur Eakin took the bronze medal in the U13 LPJS series in Newcastle. Arthur stormed the poules, going into the DEs as top seed. However, he came unstuck in the semi final against Faaris El-Saie of ZFW, going out 8-10, despite having demolished Faaris convincingly in the poule. However, the bronze medal result takes Arthur up to 4th place in the 2019 U13 LPJS rankings.
Catching up on last weekend's results, both Arthur and Ethan fenced in the very competitive U13 Camden LPJS, with Ethan finishing 13th and Arthur 14th from 41 fencers. Ethan went out to bronze medallist Sebastian Franz, while Arthur fenced strongly to lose only 8-10 to the gold medallist, Mikhel Archer of Newham Swords.
Finally, well done to Roderick Howlett, who starred in his first ever team event, fencing foil for the Sheffield University Men's 2nd team against Bradford University's 1st team. Roderick (who has just started his PhD there) won his matches 6-4, 8-3 and 5-0. The 3 man foil team won 45-43 overall and won overall in the three weapons.