Category: Fencing

the great­est thing in my col­lege life is now fin­ished. i’m no longer a var­si­ty ath­lete. i’m now a var­si­ty alum­nus.

to pref­ace: there is this guy on our team, a pret­ty good ep eist, who could be so much bet­ter if he applied him­self. unfor­tu­nate­ly, he feels no need to come to prac­tice or act as a team­mate in any way since he is a schol­ar­ship recruit. appar­ent­ly he told my cap­tain that he is tired of fenc­ing and that our coach can­not do any­thing about it if he choos­es not to work hard. this team mem­ber also choos­es not to stay with the team dur­ing com­pe­ti­tions he is always off alone sleep­ing some­where when the rest of us are fenc­ing. the worst, how­ev­er, is how he treats our oppo­nents. he humil­i­ates them by show­ing his com­plete and utter con­tempt in the form of grand­stand­ing, bla­tant­ly obvi­ous and inten­tion­al. he’ll squat on strip and stay there, or remain in a lunge, or after an easy touch against an oppo­nent will yell ‘woo-hoo’ in a ‘you mean noth­ing to me’ kind of way.

so in the indi­vid­ual tour­na­ment i end up hav­ing to fence this guy in the direct elim­i­na­tion rounds. every­one want­ed me to beat him, even our own team­mates. espe­cial­ly since he does­n’t even respect us. i did my best, but lost 13–15. what is infu­ri­at­ing about that is, he is still good enough to beat me despite all the effort i put forth to fence well and the neg­li­gi­ble amount he exerts. so endeth my col­le­giate fenc­ing career. i was pissed i want­ed to win so bad­ly, and imme­di­ate­ly after the bout i real­ized that it was all over. i’m sure it had been float­ing around sub­con­scious­ly in my head but after it was done i had to hit the show­ers as quick­ly as pos­si­ble to do a bit of cry­ing. i can still do my bit to help the team, but any true tan­gi­ble effect result­ing from my actu­al fenc­ing will nev­er be again.

it was great while it last­ed. and i hope the mem­o­ries last much longer.