The Stabbing Gentlemen's Report Summer 2014 | Página 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