A Quick Look at CBA Epee’s Summer

The summer has been active and fast!

Here’s what we’ve done, and will do:

Summer Nationals

17 CBA fencers competed in Portland at the end of June. This is the largest fencing tournament in the world: 11 days; 108 strips; 4,000+ fencers; 6,000+ fencer/events. All of our fencers made progress toward becoming nationally competitive: pretty much everyone won pool bouts; about half of our entrants were promoted to the direct elimination; about half of those fencers won at least one DE bout.

Out best result was Anna Schliep, with a hard-won 17 th place in Division III Women’s Epee. Onward!

Basel Camp

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Four CBA fencers participated in the Fechgesellschaft Basel’s International Camp in Switzerland in late July. The camp had 40 fencers from 12 countries, with a coaching staff from six countries, including Coach Paul Soter. Arya Telci, Graeme Yates, Marsden Rowland, and Chase Drawz represented CBA admirably.

Youth Tournament Camp

Seven CBA fencers participated in our first Youth Epee tournament on August 9.

They fenced a double-pool event designed to introduce our youngest fencers to tournament fencing. Congratulations to Sasha Warden, Camilia Schliep, Kai Pham, Frank Welch, Kira Pham, Claire Knight, and Levi Hosensky!

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and now, on the will-do list:

Bocholt Camp

Seven CBA fencers are headed for the International Fencing Camp in Bocholt, Germany in late August. This camp has nearly 100 from 17 countries, with a coaching staff from six countries, including Coach Paul Soter. CBA’s contingent is Chase Drawz, Jospehine Skjei, Sukey Rossow, Wesley Sanford, Katia Solodin, Maya Radtke, and Leah Siskind.

Austrian Visit

Four fencers from FC Graz in Austria and their coach will be visiting CBA from August 26 – September 6. Coach Lissy Knechtl, Lasse Klick, Laura Haiderer, Ilvie Ranacker, and Lilly Pichlofer will train with CBA fencers; experience Minneapolis; and travel with is to a Regional tournament. Volunteer help with transportation and logistics is welcome!

New Strength & Conditioning Structure

Beginning after Labor Day, CBA’s epee S&C will be outsourced to Atletica. Laura

Griffin will introduce the program and the app at a Zoom meeting at 2:30 on Saturday,

August 22.  She will explain the app, how it works, and how she and the CBA coaches

will be able to track our fencers’ S&C.  We will record this presentation and make it

available to all of our fencers and families.

This new S&C structure is part of our evolution as a competitive program.  It will accomplish a number of positives:

1. Enable the fencers to do their S&C on their own schedule. (They will still be able to do it at CBA, either at the same times, or at different times);

2. Provide cutting-edge fencing S&C; 

3. The app’s Leader Board function will engender positive competition among the fencers for S&C effort; and

4. It will free up more lesson time for Paul and Anna at times that the fencers can make.