#nyhfa

I had almost forgotten what it felt like.

Not the adrenaline rush, or the Drive - these things have been with me always - but the Joy. Not necessarily the joy of winning, but the joy of the fight for the fight’s sake. This feeling that after you’ve finished the last fight of the pool you just wish you could have more. One more pool. One more fight. One more exchange. ****

It’s been a long, hard run since Seattle. Losses piling on top of losses make it hard to believe people when they say you’re fighting better, and you start to question whether or not this is it for you, whether or not you’ve reached that wall you can’t break.

At Flower Point I get an inkling of what I might yet be able to do, but it’s here at Queen’s Gambit that I finally feel like I have made progress. It’s slow progress, much more tortoise than hare, but all progress starts somewhere.

*****

I signed up for the cutting tournament here to see if the fixes I’ve been working on for the last two months can work. I am using a sword that’s not mine - I won’t fly with my sharp, and the TSA’s massacre of my Sport Tube makes me more certain that was the right call - and like driving a car that isn’t yours, it can take some time to be comfortable with it.

My first cut is a clean right oberhau, the first time I’ve had a successful oberhau in a cutting competition since last June. My second cut, a left oberhau, is unsuccessful. It’s disheartening for sure, but at the same time I know why it failed - and you can’t fix problems you don’t understand. My third cut, going back to the right side, very nearly succeeds - and I am given credit by the judges for a ‘piece hanging’. The piece hanging basically destroys any chance of success I have at my second left oberhau.

I walk away mildly disappointed, but this is the first time I’ve gotten even partial credit for more than a single cut. A poor performance in the abstract is still a poor performance - but a personal best is still a personal best.

*****

My pool is a roller coaster.

In my first fight with Aaron my goal is to last for more than one exchange (as the ruleset allows for a one-exchange kill). I make it to three before he lands a gorgeous, textbook zorn ort I wouldn’t have been able to defend even if I had reacted fast enough.

My second fight with Kasey gets off to a rough start before I start feeling like myself again. I don’t actually remember how I score the points I do, but the longer the fight goes on the stronger I feel.

Next, Ashleigh and I meet for our fifth tournament bout in a year. We go for nearly the whole time without a single exchange - her begging me to engage her and me not trusting myself to be fast enough to start a cut and meet her response. We finally have an exchange at the end - she hits me but leaves her head wide open for me to hit back - but it is called out of time. It’s a draw until it isn’t - the table staff tells us just as we’ve removed our masks that we still have seven more seconds. This time there is no holding back on her part, and Ashleigh nails me. It is, as Tom says, simultaneously both some of my best fighting, and some of my worst.

My last fight with Miguel is almost over before it starts - I watch him tear his way through most of our pool, strong and lightning fast. My wish not so much to win this fight as it is to just last for more than a single exchange.

Yet when our fight actually starts, something else happens. There are openings I can see, even if I can’t quite reach them. I get the benefit of a call that penalizes your opponent for pushing you out of bounds (it slightly feels like cheating), and our final exchange scores points for both of us. The end result is that instead of losing 4-0 as I had thought we might at the outset, we end up with a draw.

****

At first I’m somewhat disappointed - I wanted so badly to at least split my pool - but the further away I get from it, the happier I become with my performance. As far as Opens go, this is one of the tougher pools that I’ve had, and yet there is only one fight where I am clearly outmatched (as are most people when they fight Aaron).

My placement and my ranking won’t improve much, if at all, but that doesn’t matter - because for the first time in a long time, I finally feel like my fencing has.

And now I just want more.

“Did you hear about Bill’s armor?” Lisa asks.

I’ve just walked into Turf Valley after a three-and-a-half hour drive, and Lisa’s already assisting me with my one billion bags into the elevator. I haven’t heard, but I’m already preparing for the worst.

“No, what happened?”

“There was a break-in in Cambridge, someone stole it from his car.”

There is no one in HEMA having a worse year than Bill, but this is a dagger. His armor isn’t only a passion and a hobby; it’s a significant part of his livelihood.

Wednesday, the day before Longpoint officially begins, the news spreads with ridiculous speed - but so, too, does our response. Dayna’s already collecting donations.

****

In the four days and change I am at Turf Valley, I feel more like I belong here than I do anywhere else. We don’t have to explain to each other what this whole sword thing is about; we already know.

We welcome each other, accept each other, challenge each other. We fight our friends and teammates in our pools and then become their loudest supporters. We corner for each other, staff the ring for each other, and race down the hall to let someone know they’ve made eliminations when they thought otherwise.

It’s impossible to walk more than a few feet without running into someone you know, and you didn’t know them before, well, you know them now. There are people I see at every event I go to, and people I may see only once or twice a year, but it never gets old.

Longpoint doesn’t feel like a vacation; it feels like a return home.

****

Here I went into my pool with a general idea as to how it would go, and it went exactly as I expected - winning one match, losing one, and getting lucky on my third. Although there are multiple people telling me I fenced well, I’m still not sure it’s the best fencing I’ve ever done. I still don’t know when to avoid the grapple; still hesitate way too much on the attack.

The next day, I lose my first elimination match to Lisa, coming back from a large deficit to nearly tie the score before I run out of time. It’s disappointing, but on the other hand Lisa’s saved my butt g-d knows how many times, and it’s a pleasure to see her make it to finals.

It’d be easy to be bitter over losses, to envy those who perform better then ourselves, but our family is such that we find ourselves cheering for those who’ve bested us, and then washing it all down with some food and generously shared drinks.

****

So then the video above shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows us; letting Bill go home without at least *some* idea of how much he means to our community was just not possible.

Never in my life have I seen so many people come together so fast to support one person, and yet this is the community we’ve created. We could have spent the weekend caring only about our own fights, our own performances, and our own clubs - but we did more than that. We cared about each other, supported each other and made our community that much stronger.

Bill says it, but it bears repeating - this is HEMA.

This is family.