Today Josie had one of her best showings in a fencing tournament.
Several people commented on how far she has grown and improved since her first tournament appearance a little over two years ago. She was so scared and intimidated then. She still battles those feelings now, but today she managed to maintain her cool most of the time.
After the tournament, I asked Josie to recount the day’s events from her own perspective. Below is her conversation with me, edited for length and clarity.
JOSIE: So today was an emotional rollercoaster — really. It’s crazy. Okay, so what happened?
Well, we woke up and we had breakfast, and it was that nice bread that Ms. Munaba got. I had peanut butter, and tea, and cheese. It was good cheese — an aged yellow cheddar. And it was great.
We went to Wentzville for the tournament, which was hosted by the Buccaneer Blades. And it was cold — really cold. There’s a little bit of snow, actually.
I was in two events: senior women’s épée and senior mixed épée. “Senior mixed épée” has men and women, so it’s a much bigger event than the senior women’s.
There were six women in the women’s épée event: me, Emily, and Abby B. from The Fencers Academy; plus Cordelia, Heidi, and Abby F. from the Buccaneer Blades.
There are two parts for each event. The first part is the “pool round.” Fencers are divided into groups of five or six, and everyone in the pool fences each other in short three-minute bouts to five points. Afterward, you tally up each person’s wins and losses, as well as the total touches you scored versus the touches allowed.
These numbers are used to determine your seeding in the bracket for the second part of the tournament: “direct elimination.” If you play Super Smash Bros. (or watch the NCAA Tournament), that’s an example of direct elimination. In “DE” bouts, you fence to 15 points, so they are much longer.
Because there were just six of us, there was only one pool, and we all fenced each other. I won three out of my pool bouts, which was pretty good compared to last time.
JOSH: I believe that’s a record for you.
JOSIE: Yeah, I think that’s a record. I got a decent amount of points. It was my first time getting a positive indicator, meaning that I had scored more touches than I allowed people to score on me.
So I got three wins. I beat Cordelia, Heidi, and Abby F.
The bout with Cordelia was close, 5-4. She was really good. She was fast.
JOSH: She’s a ranked fencer.
JOSIE: Yeah, she’s ranked. So I did a lot of counter-attacking, I think.
The bout with Heidi was kind of a mixed bag. It was a lot of counter-attacking and also beats. I don’t remember that one super well, but I won 5-1.
The last time I fenced Abby F., she got the drop on me. But this time I was prepared: I had been watching and I knew what to do. I tried to remember how distance works, because I’m not good at gauging distance when I fence. And I hit her when she would run at me. I won, 5-1.
So that was pretty good. And that put me fourth for the seeding.
Then came my direct elimination bout. I fenced Heidi. She changed how she fenced after the pool round, and I lost 15 to 14 — but that’s the closest that I have ever gotten to winning a DE bout.
[Editor’s note: Actually Josie did win one previous DE bout in a women’s event last October, but her opponent was sort of a fill-in, and so Josie doesn’t count that one]
Our club finished the women’s event with two people on the podium, which is great. I always love that.
JOSIE: After that, I had to wait until 2 p.m. for the senior mixed event to begin. I cooled down and we ate lunch. I was riding the high of my near-victory and enjoying Skittles.
I was the only one from my club competing in the senior mixed event. So as it got closer, Cordelia and I started doing stretches together, plus a little bit of practice.
And then we waited to see which pool we would get. Obviously senior mixed event is much bigger than the women’s event. There were 19 fencers, who were divided into three pools.
I ended up in pool 2. There were six people: Grant, John, Daniel, Heidi, Dylan, and me.
JOSH: Tell me a little something about each one.
JOSIE: First, I faced Grant, who I had heard about and I had been given advice. But I didn’t know it was him when I fenced him, so all of that went out the window. The bout was very fast. I lost, 5-0. It was a lot of fleche and advance-lunge, and it was over fast. I blue-screened (froze mentally), and when that happens I get very upset. My self-esteem kind of took a nosedive. I didn’t feel so good.
Next I fenced Daniel, Heidi’s husband. I felt better about that one, because it was closer — 4-3 — but I still lost. He’s a very good fencer. Again, I was mostly getting counterattacks and stuff, but I felt very good getting what I did, considering how good he is. The reason it ended 4-3 was because time ran out. I remember I looked up at the clock after I got a touch, and I was like, “How did it go from two minutes left to six minutes?” And then I realized, no, that’s 6.25 seconds.
John was tall — though almost everyone’s taller than me — and he had a beard. He’s one of their veterans. He was very patient. I am more of a defensive fencer — I’m reactionary. I like counterattacks. I like going for the wrists and trying to almost parry. Because he was patient, I was trying to bait him into attacking me, but he got good hits. I lost 5-2.
After that I faced Heidi again [the same one from the women’s event], and I lost that one, 5-2. I was very tired and still feeling low.
The last one was Dylan. I got two touches on him. I don’t want to be mean, but I don’t like people who fleche all over the place, like they’re a supersonic missile. But he was one of those people who are very fast and go for the jugular and stuff. I tried to do something I had been practicing with Coach Phillip — bringing the blade up and then doing the infighting — but Dylan got his blade out from that. I don’t know how, but he did. And then he hit me in the neck.
JOSH: Was it really great pain?
JOSIE: It wasn’t as debilitating as the pressure point incident [in a previous tournament]. It was more like it hurt and it was distracting. I was upset already and then I got hit, so I had a lump in my throat and then I had a lump on my neck, if that makes sense. I put a bunch of arnica gel on it.
So that was the pool.
Shockingly enough, I was not last in the seeding. I got second-to-last — penultimate — with a minus-16.
JOSH: Because there was a weird number of people in this event, there were a lot of byes in the first round of direct elimination.
JOSIE: Surprisingly, I was matched up once again with Heidi. It was a rematch from the women’s event. That was my fourth time fencing her that day. I did not have the greatest outlook on it, but Dad you were very hype-man, pep-talking.
[Editor’s note: When we found out Josie would face Heidi again in the first round of direct elimination, I told her this was her best chance ever to get an elimination victory in a mixed event, since she usually earns a low seed and ends up facing very strong fencers in the first round. I think she rolled her eyes.]
JOSIE: The one thing I did know worked with Heidi was beats. My teammate Abby B. had pointed out that Heidi liked to go under to hit the wrist or the arm. And I knew beats made her react.
So I was getting counterattacks, but I was also focusing on the beats and being more offensive. And I was really holding out for when the clock would hit.
In direct elimination, you’re trying to score 15 points. There are three periods, and each is three minutes long. Between each period you get a one-minute break where you can relax, walk around, shake it out, get advice from your coach, drink some water. I did not have a coach with me, so instead I got a pep talk from my dad and I drank a bunch of water.
After the first period, I was losing like 8-11 or something like that,
When we were fencing, when Heidi got a hit on me, one of the guys from Buccaneer Blades was like, “Yes, Heidi, just like that!” And I was like, “Oh heck no.” So I doubled down. And I was listening to what they were saying to her so that I would be able to counter it. One guy shouted, “Keep your arm out” to her. And I was like, okay, if your arm is going to be straight, then I’m going to try and circle it out. So it was actually kind of funny.
It was close. We were point-for-point. I would get a point and then she would get a point, and then we would get three double-touches, before I finally got her.
But I won! And you will not believe the elation. I think I screamed a couple of times. It felt really good.
This is my first time ever winning a direct elimination bout in a mixed event. I’ve come close before, but this is my first time moving on. And there were only three women this time, so it wasn’t super mixed. It’s like salad with three tomatoes.
And so I was feeling really good and happy. And then I was sitting down and Heidi congratulated me. Then her husband Daniel came over and was like, “Congratulations. Now you only have to beat Lucas.”
I have this one-sided rivalry with Lucas B. I’ve just been really bitter ever since I first fenced him, because he’s so good, and I kept getting creamed. I’m also just really bitter about the black card incident. That really upset me.
[Editor: It’s hard to explain, but in DE bout against Lucas in a previous tournament, Josie received a very painful hit to the neck. She was barely able to fence and failed to score any touches within a given time period, so she got a card, and lost the bout 6-4.]
So Daniel comes over and jokes, “All you have to do now is beat Lucas.” And I’m like, “This is rigged. This is a joke. What in the world?”
So I was still really happy from winning my first DE bout, but I was also scared of fencing Lucas, because he is very aggressive. He likes to fleche.
A fleche is a fencing move where you stick your sword out and run at your opponent super-fast. It’s very effective, especially when you’re facing someone who tends to deer-in-headlights, like I do.
But God was watching out for me, and He had prepared me for this moment, because I had already fenced two people today who were fleching like that; and in lessons with Coach Phillip I had been working on how to deal with fleches.
So I had that knowledge in my head. Also, I knew I wasn’t going to win, so instead I set a goal for myself: “I’m going to hit him at least once. It’s not going to be like the card incident. I’m getting a point.”
And then, when I did get a touch, I said, “Okay, well now I want five.”
I got to three, and then I got two more, and then I had five! I was feeling pretty good about myself. We kept fencing and we kept fencing and then — did we hit the clock?
JOSH: You guys hit the clock. I know you were tied 6-6 at one point.
JOSIE: We tied 6-6 at one point. I actually had the lead on him once or twice.
I was trying to do the same thing that I did with Abby F.: lunge to the shoulder. (I have problems with point control. I need to work on that — making sure I hit where I aim. I’ll aim for the shoulder and then I’ll get to the side of it.)
But I had the lead a couple of times, and I was feeling pretty good, and I thought, “Hey, maybe I can win this.”
So we hit the clock and I’m drinking water, and we’re ecstatic over the possibility — me and Dad. And I’m psyching myself up. And then the clock resumes.
We go into our second period, and I was trying really hard. I was trying not to get double-hits. I wanted single hits. And I wasn’t getting a huge amount of doubles. He was consistently getting me, but I realized what he did and I’m going to remember it for the future.
Something that I had been trying to do, but hadn’t really been working, was before he got close to me, his arm was lower, and I wanted to do an advance-lunge — get his arm while it was still open.
I technically have a bigger striking distance than I usually operate because I’m a bad fencer and I attack with a bent arm, which you’re not supposed to do. You have your arm straight and you lead with your sword. That’s lesson one, and I’m not very good at it. And I need to be bouncier too.
So I was really focused on trying to get his arm. So he attacks me and then I make an aborted attempt to go at his arm. He does it again. I do it again.
And what I realized is the thing that seems obvious: you never do the same thing three times. Ideally you should never do this, because what he was doing was testing my reaction to see what I was going to do. And then once he was confident in the distance and my reaction, he attacked me the way he had before, and then he hit me in the foot.
He got that fair and square. And now I know what happened and I’m going to work on not letting it happen again.
But the point is: while I lost, I lost 11-15 to a ranked fencer. I was very happy with how that bout went.
And so now I vow to defeat him in the next tournament, which — I’m going to really have to work hard to keep my promise.
Well, that’s the story of Josie at the Ninth Annual “Pirate’s Life for Me.” The point is: life is a minefield, and listen to your dad and drink lots of water and have arnica gel with you. Don’t get hit in the neck more than twice.
Yeah. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.