Fencers wipe the floor at BUCS league

The second and final weekend of Men’s and Women’s, BUCS Southern Premier League took at place at Ethos on the 28th-29th January. Going into the weekend both Imperial teams looked strong contenders for their respective titles, being undefeated in the first weekend. Expectations on further victories were high and winning the league was the goal everyone was aiming for.

Saturday started with the Men’s 1st Team facing University of London, the team ranked second behind IC in the league. The sabreurs (Maiyuran Ratneswaran, Henry Gann, Didier Nohlmans, Camille van Hoffelen) gave the team a good head start with a victory of 45-24. Sadly followed by a defeat for the foilists (Robert Shaw, Chris Gilliam, Ed Collier and Sami Start), to a much stronger foil team, but the match was easily decided by a victory from the epee team (Ed Gilhead, Marcello Colombino, Miles Gandolfi).

Whilst the guys finished their match, the girls started fencing their foil matches. Kings University did not show up due to illness, which meant that there were only 3 matches to fence in each weapon. IC’s incredibly strong women’s foil team (Hannah Bryars, Outi Supponen, Alice Mitchell) confirmed their reputation by going through all matches in fast forward, finishing with an average win by 29 hits. With most of the day left, everyone from IC gathered next to the guys’ piste where they were now fencing Oxford University. There were about 20 people in the audience, consisting of both the women’s and men’s teams, other club members, coaches, alumni and friends, everyone trying to make as much noise as possible to throw the opponents off guard. This helped the sabreurs to another easy victory, followed by two very even matches in both foil and epee. The previous lost their match by no less than 3 hits, and epee was even closer with the annoyingly thrilling result 44-45. Despite these annoying defeats, the overall match was won thanks to the points margin from the sabreuers. Meaning 2 victories out of 2 for the Men and 3 out of 3 for the Women, a very promising first day.

On Sunday, the men had a late start, whilst women’s sabre team (Clare Harding, Zoe Robinson, Hannah Bryars) conquered the Ethos Energia Studio. The small hall on the second floor barely had time to realise what was going on before all matches were done, which meant that those who had teams downstairs had time to watch parts of their progress and support. With only epee to go, the women had already won the league. The sabreurs index together with the foilists performance the day before summed up to victory against all other universities regardless of the result of epee.

The men still have not started their matches for the day, so most IC supporters, began supporting UL as they fenced University of Cambridge. Not only London solidarity but also a vested interest in the result increased the volume of the IC cheering. As depending on the result of the match, the men could, just as the women, secure the victory before lunchtime. As UL reached the score necessary to win the match, IC were smiling just as much, if not more. From that moment, every victory would only be for the pride of our university and the club.

The guys started their Sunday well by beating University of Bristol with reassuring performances in both sabre and epee. As they finished their match, the women’s epee team (Emily Bottle, Charlotte Levin, Hannah Bryars) were brought back to earth as Cambridge beat them, 40-45. But the matches that followed were all won with convincing margins of 10 points or more.

All that was left the men’s match against Cambridge. The captains of the two teams, Ed G for IC and Valentin Dalibard for Cambridge, had agreed upon changing the order from the standard sabre-foil-epee to epee-sabre foil. This meant that sabre this time would not be able to set an early lead for the other weapons to fence against, but that they would first have to cover up a possible loss from epee and then get enough hits to give the foilists an advantage. The epeeists had to bite the bullet, finding the Cambridge opponents slightly stronger than themselves, but the sabreurs returned the advantage to IC. As it stood the foilists had to reach 27 hits in order to win the match overall, which was not to be taken for granted but far from impossible.

Everyone’s nerves were uptight, fencers as well as audience, well aware of what lay ahead. The fact that the league was already won barely crossed people’s mind, the only thing that mattered was to win the match. Cambridge immediately took an early lead and steadily increased their score in every bout. This threw the IC guys off balance, and they struggled to approach the magic number of 27. When the match reached its last period, the score stood at 25-40 and everyone was becoming slightly worried. Cambridge only needed 5 more hits to finish off, and IC still needed a two more to win overall. For every point Rob S, who fenced the last match, managed to gain, the crowd cheered more and more. The moment he scored the magical hit, the cheer lifted the roof, and he turned to the crowed, took his mask off for a moment, and sighed with relief. The match was won, so was the league, and both teams stood undefeated.