Z Gala

Z Gala. The annual fencing tournament. This would be my first time participating in this tournament. Pressure is on. It would be fought by age groups and experience levels. I'm in the Novice 16-20 group. The bad thing about being assigned by age group is that all the opponents are good. There are no push-overs in this group.
Every single bout and every point has to be fought hard for.

First was the Poules. We get split into smaller groups of 4 to fence for ranking.
I lost 1 match and won the other two, 5-0 against garrett and 5-2 against zhunwen. Lost to 3-5 Greg. Guess I was overconfident there. So in the group of 8. I was ranked 2nd. So i get to face the 7th ranked guy in the first elimination round.

Garrett again. Easy meat I said to myself. Cause i defeated him 5-0 earlier with
surprising ease. He did put up a better fight this time. but I still beat him 15-7.
He charged me at one point and I was too stunned to do anything and he got me. Cool move. Ok I am thru to the Semis.

Next opponent would either be Jasper, the fencer who I feel is the most skillful among us or Keith the left-hander. I think Keith would be the tougher opponent because he's speedier than Jasper. Their match was a good one to watch and Jasper was the victor.

As always Jasper proved to be a tough opponent at the end of the 1st interval, The score was 10-10 although he went ahead at first. After that, I sort of had him figured out and the score went to 14-10. The last point I gambled and gave a yelling charge and amazingly I scored a nice hit. Yea! Now I'm a finalist and I hoped I'll face Greg instead of Andre.

No such luck, Greg lost and there goes my hope for being Gala champion this year. Andre is the very guy that trashed me 5-0 a couple times when we last faced off.
No matter, if I'm going to lose I'll make him fight for every single point. Honour.
I'm imagining myself as a knight. If I have to fight, I'll fight and go down with honour. I will not run. I will not give up. I'll make him FIGHT for every point.
Only thing missing from my mind game is that there's no fair damsel waiting for me. Oh well....

Amazingly, I did better than I thought and I lost narrowly 14-15. Now I felt kind of disappointed because I could have won it. It was the closest final in the whole Gala.

This battle has shown me the power of determination and how fighting hard no matter how hard the odds are can do. The silver trophy sits proudly in my cabinet now.