News | Cape Fear Fencing Association

CFFA Holiday party reminder

December 10, 2014December 10, 2014 Gregory Spahr Coaches Communication

Just a reminder that the CFFA annual Holiday party will occur directly after the finish of fencing at the Old Man Winter or around 7 pm on this Saturday, December 13th. Until ? We all seem to be getting older, so probably not that late. LOL

Pork Barbecue and some sides will be provided. Bringing additional sides, or desserts and beverages is welcome.

See you there.

pax vobiscum,

Greg Spahr
Head Coach
Cape Fear Fencing Association

“The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
but that’s the way to bet.” Damon Runyon

CFFA update for December 7th

December 7, 2014December 7, 2014 Gregory Spahr Coaches Communication

NCFL meet yesterday at East Chapel Hill. We sent 1 2/3 teams for the B event. The girls, Emma Filer, Emma Graf, and Reaghan Juelke went 5-0 and won the B division. Filer was 10-0, Graf was 9-1, and Juelke was 6-5. Harry Shaheen and Will Golder fenced a person down the whole day, but still won one match. They might well have won more if they had a third fencer. Individually, Harry was 5-7 and Will was 5-6. However, I think Will gave Emma F. her biggest scare of the day. Considering all five of them are in middle school fencing primarily high school students, they all did very well.

Practice should be pretty regular. The UNCW folks are doing finals, so they won’t be in Wednesday.

Keep
getting Holiday request orders to Herman or me. Next weekend is pretty much the latest to get the information to us. That cutoff date gives us a bit of room for mistaken orders,
pick up, wrong sizing, etc.

Our

next home adult event is December 13th. Open foil, open epee, and Vet
epee. We currently have a B event for the
open epee, need one more for a C event in the open foil, and and 6 bodies for a B event in the Vet epee. If you are
thinking about it, get signed up. Salle New Bern is again
donating some tickets for winners to the Tryon Palace for a tour on the 20th.

The club Christmas Party will be at Herman Smith’s immediately following the end of fencing on Saturday. Herman’s house is on 4th street, almost exactly across from the gym. Yellow house with a white fence and a huge dog. Bringing a side dish and your favorite adult beverage is encouraged.

I
am looking at the 18th as the last day for afterschool this year. The Last day for Lejeune will be the 19th.

I
will be gone the week of Christmas, but will let you know if it looks
like people will be getting together for practice on Tuesday of that
week.

Looking
at the New Year, the next homeschool meet is January 3rd at Oak Ridge.
For adults there is the Hangover in Richmond. It is usually a large
event with each weapon being an A in the opens and with separate strong
women’s events. Sign up on askfred before the 28th, after that the fees jump a great deal.

Afterschool
and a new beginner afterschool class will start on January 5th. The
next adult beginner class will start on January 6th, with an
intermediate class to follow if anyone is interested. The next
Homeschool beginner class will start on the 7th.

The 10th is the first NCFL meet of 2015, at Kestrel Heights. Harry and Will could really use a third fencer if anyone is interested.

The
17th is our first adult event of the New Year. With this one we are
bringing back the one touch epee event in addition to the open foil and
epee. All of our spring events are now up on askfred, so start getting
signed up.

The
18th is a homeschool event. I am hoping to get it on board Camp
Lejeune. In addition to the homeschool teams, I am going to try to have
a meet with women’s foil teams and mixed epee teams in the morning. I
will keep everyone posted. These would all be for high school age and
below fencers and you would need a full uniform. We will loan you
knickers (if we have them in your size) and underarm protectors. No
cost to fence and we can always make composite teams.

The next set of Camp Lejeune classes should start on the 23rd.

The 24th will be our first 12 and under event for 2015. Standard times and rules.

The 31st is the second NCFL meet of January, location yet to be decided.

pax vobiscum,

Greg Spahr
Head Coach
Cape Fear Fencing Association

“The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
but that’s the way to bet.” Damon Runyon

NCFL meet

December 3, 2014December 3, 2014 Gregory Spahr Coaches Communication

Looking for a third foilist to be on a team with Harry Shaheen and Will Golder for the NCFL meet at East Chapel Hill this Saturday. Let me know if you are interested.

pax vobiscum,

Greg Spahr
Head Coach
Cape Fear Fencing Association

“The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
but that’s the way to bet.” Damon Runyon

CFFA Update for November 30

November 30, 2014November 30, 2014 Gregory Spahr Coaches Communication

Oliver Galbraith went to Mid-South’s Black Friday event and won both the foil and epee events.

The homeschool team went to a meet yesterday in Oak Ridge and came away 1-1. Caroline Artz got the winning touch in a match that was tied four bouts apiece in a bout that had gone to La Belle.

Should be the standard week of practice this week.

December
6th is the 2nd NCFL meet,. This one will be at East Chapel Hill High
School. It starts at 10 am and will last until? Let me know who is
interested in going so we can plan carpools, equipment, teams, etc. Should be about the more or less standard leave from Sam’s Club on College about 6:45 am time frame.

Keep
getting Holiday request orders to Herman or me. A cutoff date of about
two weeks before Christmas gives us a bit of room for mistaken orders,
pick up, wrong sizing, etc.

The week of the 8th the UNCW students will be in exams, so I doubt they will be in for Wednesday practice. I will be there if anyone is interested, let me know.

Our

next home adult event is December 13. Open foil, open epee, and Vet
epee. Start getting signed up now. We are currently have 18 for the
open epee, 11 in the open foil, and 7 in the Vet epee. If you are
thinking about it, get signed up. Salle New Bern is again
donating some tickets for winners to the Tryon Palace for a tour on the 20th.

I am looking at the 18th as the last day for afterschool this year. I will be gone the week of Christmas, but will let you know if it looks like people will be getting together for practice on Tuesday of that week.

Looking at the New Year, the next homeschool meet is January 3rd at Oak Ridge. For adults there is the Hangover in Richmond. It is usually a large event with each weapon being an A in the opens and with separate strong women’s events.

Afterschool and a new beginner afterschool class will start on January 5th. The next adult beginner class will start on January 6th, with an intermediate class to follow if anyone is interested. The next Homeschool beginner class will start on the 7th.

The 10th is the first NCFL meet of 2015, at Kestrel Heights.

The 17th is our first adult event of the New Year. With this one we are bringing back the one touch epee event in addition to the open foil and epee. All of our spring events are now up on askfred, so start getting signed up.

The 18th is a homeschool event. I am hoping to get it on board Camp Lejeune. In addition to the homeschool teams, I am going to try to have a meet with women’s foil teams and mixed epee teams in the morning. I will keep everyone posted. These would all be for high school age and below fencers and you would need a full uniform. We will loan you knickers (if we have them in your size) and underarm protectors. No cost to fence and we can always make composite teams.

The next set of Camp Lejeune classes should start on the 23rd.

The 24th will be our first 12 and under event for 2015. Standard times and rules.

The 31st is the second NCFL meet of January, location yet to be decided.

pax vobiscum.

Greg Spahr
Head Coach
Cape Fear Fencing Association

“The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
but that’s the way to bet.” Damon Runyon

2015 Tournaments

November 24, 2014November 24, 2014 Gregory Spahr Coaches Communication

The NC Division has released the schedule for early 2015. Here are the adult tournaments and where I am currently plugging in youth tournaments.

USA Fencing Tournaments (All events mixed unless otherwise noted)

January 17, 2015 Open Foil and Epee One Touch Epee

February 7, 2015 Open Foil and Epee D and Under Epee

March 21, 2015 Women’s Open Foil and Epee Women’s D and Under Sabre

April 18, 2015 Open Foil and Epee E and Under Sabre

May 23, 2015 Open Foil and Epee D and under Foil

Youth Tournaments (All Foil, Sabre, and Epee)

January 24, 2015

March 14, 2015

May 30 2015

pax vobiscum,

Greg Spahr
Head Coach
Cape Fear Fencing Association

“The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
but that’s the way to bet.” Damon Runyon

CFFA Update for November 23

November 23, 2014November 23, 2014 Gregory Spahr Coaches Communication

We held the initial NCFL meet of the year at the Tileston gym yesterday. There were teams from six high schools plus a CFFA team. The local fencers and teams did pretty well. In the A division, Coastal Christian went 3-2 and finished second. Their members were Oliver Galbraith, Mack Smith, Jonathan Hartness, and Taylor Kinsey. Oliver went 15-0 for the day. Hoggard High School was 2-3 and finished fifth, which shows how tight all the teams were. Hoggards members were Ryan Hightower, Michael Hall, and Natalie Schmidt. Ryan led the team at 9-4. Hoggard won the intercity match 5-4. In the B division a CFFA team of Emma Filer, Emma Graf, and Reaghan Juelke went 3-1 and finished first. Emma Filer was 9-1 while Emma Graf was 8-2.

Thanks to Brendan McConville, Jesse and Josh Harvey, and Michael Glapion for refereeing. A big thanks to the Harveys for helping with the tear down. We started on time and were done and out by 3 pm with time for an impromptu sabre pool thrown in. Hopefully we can get everyone else to run things that efficiently.

Short week due to Thanksgiving. Afterschool on Monday and Tuesday only. Homeschool on Wednesday, but no evening practice. No practice on Thanksgiving or on board Camp Lejeune on Black Friday.

Mid South is again hosting their Black Friday event on the 28th. See askfred for details.

November
29th is the 2nd homeschool fencing event, again at Oak Ridge. Fencers
can still join until January. Another fencer 13 or over would allow us to
have a full A team. Let me know if you are interested. I think you can
talk to our people who competed and you will find out they enjoyed it. We will make certain that everyone has all the gear they need after practice on Wednesday.

Keep getting Holiday request orders to Herman or I. A cutoff date of about two weeks before Christmas gives us a bit of room for mistaken orders, pick up, wrong sizing, etc.

Our

next home adult event is December 13. Open foil, open epee, and Vet
epee. Start getting signed up now. We are currently have 15 for the open epee, 11 in the open foil, and 7 in the Vet epee. If you are thinking about it, get signed up. Salle New Bern is again
donating some tickets for winners to the Tryon Palace

pax vobiscum,

Greg Spahr
Head Coach
Cape Fear Fencing Association

“The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
but that’s the way to bet.” Damon Runyon

Non fencing issue updates

November 19, 2014November 19, 2014 Gregory Spahr Coaches Communication

Herman is starting to collect orders for people wanting to order fencing equipment for holiday gifts. If you are not certain about a size you can go to a company website (if it needs to be a secret) or we can just finagle the information out of the youngsters while they are getting dressed. Those of you who have ordered things, please take care of payment ASAP so we can free space up on the club credit card for the holiday rush. If we can, we will probably try to find equipment that fits out of the cabinets. Although rush things can happen, if we would set a two weeks before Christmas date as the last day to order that will give us some time to deal with wrong sizes, incorrect merchandise, picking it up surreptitiously, etc.

I have information concerning an Italian exchange student who fences looking for a host family in North Carolina. He is 16 and I am not certain what weapon he fences. It would be for Fall 2015. If you are interested I can give you the sponsoring group’s contact information.

Lastly, I am looking at holding one of the homeschool meets on board Camp Lejeune on Sunday, January 18th. The homeschool meet would start at the standard 1:30 pm time. I would like to combine that with an NCFL auxiliary meet of women’s foil teams and mixed epee teams. That would start about 11 am I am guessing. Fencers would need to be high school age or under. Fencers would need full uniforms and we would help with that as much as possible. It would cost nothing for fencers to participate. If you are not associated with the base I would need to know who would be driving to get you a pass to get on base. MCCS is offering us part of their 1 year old very nice facility in which to hold this, but want to know what the numbers might be before giving a final approval. Let me know if you are interested.

pax vobiscum,

Greg Spahr
Head Coach
Cape Fear Fencing Association

“The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
but that’s the way to bet.” Damon Runyon

CFFA update for November 16

November 17, 2014November 17, 2014 Gregory Spahr Coaches Communication

We had four people compete at the JO qualifiers at Mid-South this weekend. In junior men’s foil, Oliver Galbraith started slowly, but then got it together to take the silver medal and qualify for both the junior and cadet foil competitions. Samantha Milewski and Riley Hart competed in the junior women’s epee. Unfortunately, they ran into each other in the first DE. Samantha avenged her loss to Riley from the pool round and rode the momentum to the gold medal. That qualifies her for both the Junior and cadet women’s epee events. Riley finished fifth. Oliver went undefeated in the pool round of the Junior men’s epee. However, he dropped his first DE and came in 5th. Emma Filer took the silver in the Junior Women’s foil which qualified her for that and the cadet women’s foil. Oliver came back Sunday and took the silver in the cadet men’s epee, so he is also qualified for that.

Erica Julien did a couple of events in Virginia, but no results are up on askfred.

Should be a standard week of practice this week.

The
North Carolina Fencing League’s first event is
November 22nd and we will be hosting it. Right now the people who will be fencing in the B division for CFFA will be the Emmas (F & G), Reaghan Juelke and Harry Shaheen. It would be good to have a couple more foilists so we can have a complete second team. Volunteer referees are welcome. It does not look right now that there will be a big turnout of B teams. Starting time is 10 am, so be there enough earlier to warm up, etc.

Next week I was planning on having the homeschool practice on Wednesday, but no afterschool or evening practice. No practice on Thanksgiving or on board Camp Lejeune on Black Friday.

Mid South is again hosting their Black Friday event on the 28th. See askfred for details.

November
29th is the 2nd homeschool fencing event, again at Oak Ridge. Fencers
can still join until January. Another fencer over 13 would allow us to
have an A team. Let me know if you are interested. I think you can
talk to our people who competed and you will find out they enjoyed it.

December 6th is the 2nd NCFL meet, but again the location has not yet been determined.

Our

next home adult event is December 13. Open foil, open epee, and Vet
epee. Start getting signed up now. We are currently the two Bs, and
another D, plus some bodies away from having a B event in the Vet’s. Need a few bodies to get to 15 in the opens. Salle New Bern is again donating some tickets for winners to the Tryon Palace Candlelight Tour on the 20th.

pax vobiscum,

Greg Spahr
Head Coach
Cape Fear Fencing Association

“The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
but that’s the way to bet.” Damon Runyon

sword points

November 10, 2014November 10, 2014 Gregory Spahr Coaches Communication

I forgot what the kids are probably most interested in. Current sword points:

Boys

Brown, Orion 16

Golder 14

Wells 10

Jenkinson 8

Swart 7

Walston, Kent 7

Brown, Jacob 6

Bruno 5

Shaheen 5

Rottman 5

Million 4

Donelson 3

Walston, Avery 3

Amdahl 2

Jaghman 1

Sickles 1

Girls

Juelke 15

Artz, Caroline
11

Milewski
10

Artz, Isabelle 8

Gray 5

Williams 4

Huggins 2

pax vobiscum,

Greg Spahr
Head Coach
Cape Fear Fencing Association

“The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
but that’s the way to bet.” Damon Runyon

CFFA update for November 10th

November 10, 2014November 10, 2014 Gregory Spahr Coaches Communication

We had a good kids tournament Saturday. A lot of our “new” foilists turned out and very few of the really veteran 12 and unders were there, so it was a wide open affair in that weapon. The results:

Foil 1st Elijah Wells 2nd Orion Brown 3rd (tie) Jacob Jenkinson & Caroline Artz

9 and under Gold – Walker Rottman Silver – Lexi Williams Bronze – Christopher Donelson

Sabre was pretty much the usual suspects:

1st Reaghan Juelke 2nd Amir Shaheen 3rd (tie) Avery Walston & Liam Bruno

Epee was small, but had a very high level of fencing.

1st Nicole Milewski 2nd Kent Walston 3rd (tie) Liam Bruno & Lydia Huggins

Thanks to Heather and all the parents.

On Sunday, we had our homeschool fencing team compete in Oak Ridge. The fencers were Nickolas and Meredythe Galliher, and Caroline and Isabelle Artz. They went 1-3 in the B division, beating a team from FHE.

Should be a standard week of practice. (We will have afterschool, etc. on Veteran’s Day as St. Mary does not take the day off). Not many UNCW fencers are showing up on Wednesday, so that is shaping up as a good night for people who want to come in for lessons and doing work without a lot of pressure to fence bouts.

Sign ups for JO qualifiers are now on askfred.net.

The qualifying events are on Saturday and Sunday, November 15th and
16th. All the Junior events (ages 13-19) are on Saturday and the Cadet
(ages 13-16) qualifiers are on Sunday. The JOs are always held over
the President’s Day weekend in February. The events are in Richmond,
VA, this year. The preregistration deadline has passed, so it will be pretty expensive to jump in now.

That
weekend, Fredericksburg has large Vet events on Saturday and Richmond
has women only events on Sunday. Erica Julien is planning on hitting
both of them, so maybe you can head up with her or at least provide back
up.

The
North Carolina Fencing League’s first event is
November 22nd and we will be hosting it. It is a foil team event and
takes teams of three fencers and they can have a sub. It doesn’t cost
anything for the fencers, but it is appreciated if we have volunteer referees. Fencers
do need a full outfit including knickers and underarm protector. Let us
know if you might be interested in fencing and don’t have such things
yet so we can see if the club has your size or can borrow from someone.
Our teams fence in the B Division since we don’t represent a school.
In that division fencers can be any age so we will put together as many
teams as we can. Of course, you will possibly be fencing people all the
way up to high school age, but we can try to split some of it out by
ages. People who will be competing need to start letting me know who will be there so we can start putting together teams.

Mid South is again hosting their Black Friday event on the 28th. See askfred for details.

November 29th is the 2nd homeschool fencing event, again at Oak Ridge. Fencers can still join until January. Another fencer over 13 would allow us to have an A team. Let me know if you are interested. I think you can talk to our people who competed and you will find out they enjoyed it.

December 6th is the 2nd NCFL meet, but again the location has not yet been determined.

Our
next home adult event is December 13. Open foil, open epee, and Vet
epee. Start getting signed up now. We are currently the two Bs, and another D, plus some bodies away from having a B event in the Vet’s.

pax vobiscum,

Greg Spahr
Head Coach
Cape Fear Fencing Association

“The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
but that’s the way to bet.” Damon Runyon