Fencing Club

[ihatedenmark.livejournal.com]

*The gym is set up a little differently this week. In addition to the regular fencing equipment and gear, there' also been a TV/VCR combo set-up in one corner of the room.*


Welcome to this week's Fencing Club. For those of you who are already experienced swordfighters, you may feel free to skip this and proceed straight to your practice. For those of you who are less experience, I have acquired a video that covers the main equipment of fencing, and the basic ways in which to use it. I hope that it will prove educational.

As always, please remember to sign in on the sheet in order to receive credit for this extracurricular activity.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wespryce/]

[Go you with the nerditude. I don't see FH having full facilities for electronic scoring, do you? Good old-fashioned calling your hits, with the good old-fashioned arguments that ensue.]

More nerditude...

[kikidelivers.livejournal.com]

[The set-up is actually not that complicated (expensive, yes, complicated, no). For one, having the grounded strip (the metal mat on the floor) is unnecessary for foil and can be gotten around in epee by having additional judges who watch for floor touches.

For a strip, all that is required would be lines painted on the wooden gymnasium floor, just like for basketball: 2m by 14m, with a halfway mark at 7m, warning lines at 2m from each end, and on guard lines 3m inwards from each of those. Scoring machines (http://www.absolutefencinggear.com/shopping/product_info.php/cPath/58_59/products_id/577?osCsid=931baea5f7b48fdaefb9178ee0dd3d7b) run from about $350 to as much as $2,000 USD. Reels (http://www.absolutefencinggear.com/shopping/product_info.php/cPath/58_59/products_id/584?osCsid=931baea5f7b48fdaefb9178ee0dd3d7b) are about $400 a piece. Floor cords are probably around $40, so an entire strip can be purchased for around $1,500 USD. Unless they are being set up in a permanant salle, there is no reason not to break down the strips at the end of every practice and storing this with the other equipment.

Prior to electric scoring, they put chalk at the end of the foils and epees to make marks on the opponant's jacket and thus indicate the location of the touch. For sabre, you acknowledged if you were hit. Naturally, this led to many sabrists gritting their teeth and saying, "No, I wasn't hit" while gripping their sabre to keep from howling from the pain of the growing welt on their arm. Incidently, having electronic scoring does nothing to prevent arguments from happening, just changes the focus and who is doing the arguing.

Anyway, since Kiki isn't even IN the Fencing Club, I don't really know how Hamlet is running things or envisioning them, I just follow the posts because I am a total junkie.]