Women’s 1st Team Fencing: Always on point
Women’s 1st Team Fencing come second in the Southern Premier League winning four out of five matches .
On the 27th/28th January, the Imperial Women’s 1st Team Fencing, travelled to Hampstead Heath to fence for over 15 hours in the Southern Premier League weekend. We competed against the 1st teams from Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Surrey, and Bristol.
We unfortunately started with our only loss of the weekend – to Oxford. Despite a close match in epee and a win in sabre, their strong foil team managed to swing the match to an overall win.
That loss motivated us to work even harder in the next match against Cambridge. Guilia Mandelli managed to secure the final point in a hard fought foil match to secure a win of 45-44, and despite a close loss in the epee, Niamh Spence led the sabre team to a large lead win, resulting in a comfortable victory over Cambridge.
The last match on Saturday extending into our 9th continuous hour of fencing was against Bristol. Undeterred by narrowly losing the first match we went on to smash the rest of the matches, gaining a wide lead and finishing with a strong win.
Sunday brought about the closest match of the weekend against Surrey, where after some sneaky tactics from Surrey, we were at a draw entering the final round of epee. The match was extremely nerve-racking, however the experience and determination of Francesca Cavallo brought an emotional win home for the Imperial Women’s 1s.
Our final match of the weekend was against UCL and we entered the match exhausted yet determined. Although starting out as a close match, we finished with a comfortable win of 130-123.
Overall we won four out of five matches placing us 2nd in the Southern Premier League and putting us in a commanding position for the upcoming knockout Championship rounds. Despite being one of the youngest teams on the circuit, we truly pushed ourselves to the absolute limit and produced a fantastic result. Over my four years on Women’s 1s, this is the best that a team has achieved. The whole team showed incredible determination, endurance and performance. Finally, thank you to Sherry Xu for being an incredible Womens 1s captain with unparalleled motivational team talks, tactics, and support.
