Fencers comprehensively beat Manchester to make it to BUCS semi-finals

The scene, Wednesday lunchtime, Ethos; enter, the Women’s first Fencing team, they start preparing for the quarterfinal match of the BUCS championships against Manchester’s firsts. Feeling very confident of advancing, thanks to previous form, everyone was ready to win. The match opened well with Imperial sabruers Zoe Robinson, Clare Harding and Hannah Bryars taking an early lead. This was something kept and extended throughout the weapon with the only real moment of fear coming when Zoe charged her opponent and ended up cross legged on the floor, with the team worried about injury. She was fine, and had even won the point. In the end, the sabre team set a new record for this year and won by 45-8.

Foil was up next and Hannah was joined this time by Outi Supponen and team captain Alice Mitchell. Imperial took the lead in the first bout, but Manchester made an attempt to regroup in the second, scoring 8 hits which put them only one behind Imperial. This manoeuvre was halted quickly by the Imperial foilists, finally winning with only 11 hits dropped over 7 bouts (each bout being meant to be to 5), and the score landing at 45-20. This meant that there was no chance of Manchester winning even if the epee lost every point. With the epeeists still caring about their own pride, a clean sweep was now what they were after.

For the epee, Hannah and Outi stepped aside and Alice was joined by Emily Bottle and Charlotte Levin. The fight appeared to be closer at the beginning of the weapon, but Imperial started pulling away, at such a pace that by the fifth bout they were leading by 25-12! In the end the score was 45-30 to Imperial and clean sweep was attained.

Overall, the Imperial women came out on top with a score line of 135-58, meaning that the women’s first team continues their undefeated streak and make it to Sheffield for the semi-finals. This has been an impressive year so far, having only dropped one weapon out of 10 matches (à three weapons each). Last year in Sheffield the women’s team came second, and so did the men. For the ladies, it was the same as their 2009 result, now they’re going for third time lucky. With the fighting spirit shown so far, Sheffield will not know what has hit it!