CADETS & YOUNGLINGS

Our morning started with a cadets and a younglings event, each with 3 competitors. This was the second tournament for cadets and younglings at the Academy, with the younglings event hosting fencers ages 7 to 10 and the cadets event ages 11 to 13. First and second place for the younglings went to Moira D. and Alex P., while the cadets’ first and second places went to Serena S. in first place and Zach P. in second.

WOMEN’S

Following the cadets and younglings tournaments was a small women’s event. Serena S., who just won the younglings event, returned to compete in this even as well, along with Samantha Kolasa who would later be competing in the Open Rey event, then Patricia Bauler and Dinah Kolasa. The finals match came down to a very close match between Bauler and Dinah Kolasa, after what was a very close pools match between the two. In the end Dinah Kolasa took first place, Bauler second, and Samantha Kolasa third.

OPEN REY

In the afternoon was the open gender Rey tournament. It was a large event with 16 total competitors ranging from A to U, giving it the potential to be an A3 tournament. But with notably no E ranked fencers, it would drop to a C3—still meaning that the top competitor could walk away with a C rank, but leaving a fight for the sea of U fencers amongst the sizable number of A and B ranked competitors.

Four pools of four were ran in two waves, with the first two pools running first and then the last two going after them. And such a large pool of competitors meant that only the top 50% of the pools would be continuing on the brackets. Meaning that every fencer had to give their best performance during their three pools matches.

The top eight competitors moving onto the brackets would be: Tony Zaldua Jr, Jose Ortiz-Miranda, Alex Arellano, David Lazenby, Nathan Wang, Kevin Degnan, Luiz Perez, and Scout B. It would be an extremely tough brackets for many of the fencers, most notably in Jose Ortiz-Miranda’s fight against Alex Arellano. While it may have been Arellano’s first Lightspeed tournament, his solid footwork and speed made him a tough competitor and, ultimately, he managed to eek out a 25-23 win against Ortiz-Miranda, before being eliminated in a similarly close and hard-fought semi-finals match against Lazenby.

That left David Lazenby fighting Tony Zaldua, Jr. for first place. He started strong, quickly pulling ahead against Zaldua, until half-time when Zaldua finally got a read on Lazenby’s pattern and quickly shot up to meet his opponent in points with two 5-point counter attacks in a row—earning him 10 points in a matter of seconds. But, by intentionally disrupting his attack pattern, Lazenby still managed to throw Zaldua off his scent and the match continued with each fencer battling neck-in-neck for a while, until the end when Zaldua sprung ahead and took victory, and with it, gold. Tony Zaldua Jr. took first place, David Lazenby second place, and Nathan Wang third place and a D rank.