Local youngsters at Manchester
This weekend we had both juniors and seniors in action, with solid last 8 results for 3 out of 4 fencers.
Ethan Dakin and Arthur Eakin were fencing in the U13 Leon Paul Junior Series at the Manchester Fencing Centre. Ethan won all the matches in his first poule. Arthur was unlucky enough to have a poule of death. He lost to ZFW's George Keogh by a narrow margin and to Newham Sword's Mihkel Archer, whilst beating David Kelly of Dunblane (to whom he'd lost before) 5-1 and beating bronze medallist Edward Thompson of Dragon Swords by a resounding 5-0.
The teammates found themselves in the same poule for the second round. Ethan won the match between the two, otherwise only losing 4-5 to Mihkel Archer. Arthur also lost to him, but again beat David Kelly and Finlay MacLachlan of Radcliffe Swords.
Ethan was 2nd seed going into the DEs and Arthur 9th. Ethan won his L16 convincingly against Oliver Wilson of Bath Swords, while Arthur had a 10-4 victory over Danish fencer Raffaele Fu Guigno. Both boys went out in L8. Arthur was 6-5 up on the eventual winner, Danielas Juras of Newham Swords, but bowed out 7-10. Ethan went 0-5 down against Henry Stirling of Sussex House, but recovered to lose only 8-10. Ethan finished in 5th place and Arthur in 7th. Good efforts from both.
Meanwhile in the East Midlands Senior Championships, Roderick Howlett was fencing foil and Ross Barker epee. The foil poules were mixed and were apparently not seeded in any conventional way, which resulted in very unexpected DE rankings after the poules. Roderick won 3 of his poule fights and lost 2 4-5, thanks to somewhat idiosyncratic refereeing. He had a bye to L8 and then faced the eventual winner, Stephen Conroy, of Nottingham Cavaliers. Roderick's approach was perhaps too consistent and Stephen came out the winner, with Roderick finishing in 6th place. Ross Barker fenced gamely in the epee, coming close to victory in a couple of his poule matches against generally very experienced opponents. He fenced well against GB veteran Max Telfer to go out 9-15 and finish in 11th place.
Finally, Ed Howlett's King's College London men's 1st team have been promoted to the BUCS Premiership Southern League. Following a convincing first leg win for King's in Swansea, the Swansea University team were not able to put together a realistic team for the second leg and conceded.