The Stabbing Gentlemen's Report Summer 2014 | Page 2

The Stabbing Gentlemen’s Report

Issue #2

The Derby Open
The Derby Open, it’s the Kentucky’s Division summer nation qualifiers. It was
held in Bowling Green, Kentucky, at Western Kentucky University, on April
26th. Those who participated in the event were the club president, DJ Wilson,
and vice president, David Deitz. One other club member, Marisca Martin
Mozeleski, did attend the tournament as a spectator, and was a huge help to
the participants (thanks Mish!).

DJ
and
David
participated in both
the Epee and Foil
events. In the Epee
event, DJ placed 9th
out of 14, and David
placed 13th out of
14. In the Foil event,
DJ placed 6th out of
10, and David placed
10th.
Both
participants gave it
their all, and even if
they did not qualify
for the summer
nationals
they
managed to accomplish some major goals at the tournament.

“We didn’t win any
medals, but we did
get some really
good tournament
contacts and that’s
a major win for the
club.” Said vice
president
David,
“We also were able
to get some really
good video content
that we uploaded to
our Youtube page.
This experience was
both valuable and
humbling, I’ll definitely will be ready for the next Derby Open!”
2

Ranks in Fencing
There are six ranks that a fencer can
get with the USFA. Those ranks are
U, E, D, C, B, and A; with U being the
lowest, and A being the highest. To
get a better understanding of what
this means, U stands for unranked
and A rank is typically Olympic level.
In order for a fencer to rank at a
tournament, the tournament must
be a USFA sanctioned tournament.
There are several different ranks of
tournaments which awards a
different number of different ranks.
We’ll keep this short and simple with
an example.
Take for instance the Derby Open
that DJ and David attended. They are
both U ranked fencers, and they
participated in an E1 event. For an
E1 event there has to be a minimum
of six fencers, and there is no
required
ranked
fencers
to
participate. In an E1 event, whoever
places first is awarded an E ranking.
Let’s look at the next event up from
that. A D1 event requires 15 fencers,
and four of those fencers must be E
ranked or higher. For any ranks to be
awarded, 2 of those 4 E ranked
fencers must finish within the top 8.
If that happens, then the first place
winner would be awarded a D rank,
and those who placed second to
fourth would be awarded E ranks.
To check out the full
classifications, click here!

event