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Four Years with HSS: 2018 in review
Another year has come and gone, and now we are celebrating the fourth birthday of Houston Sword Sports. It’s been a busy year with a lot of growth, and we are so proud of the work the club has accomplished. Take a look back with us at 2018, as we look forward to even more great stuff in 2019!
A quick overview
This year we added four new after-school programs: Saint Mary of the Purification Catholic School, Saint Cecilia Catholic School, The Post Oak School, and Mark Twain Elementary. We had four coaches go on to bigger and better things: Lauren Baker, Evan Register, Michael Dudey, and Caroline Dikibo. We also hired four new coaches: Brian Toffelmire, Julia Fowler, Hayley Gillen, and Nick Negron. We hosted six tournaments – twice as many as we hosted in 2017. Our fencers also attended more tournaments and traveled farther than they had before. Our classes and membership numbers are growing. Here are just some of our adventures from 2018.
January 27: Fencing with the Girl Scouts
Coach Liz and Coach Caroline brought fencing to the Girl Scouts at Camp Agnes Arnold. Be prepared to lunge!
February 17: Third Annual Brash Brewery Bash
The third Houston Sword Sports Brash Invitational was a blast. Raise your hand if you had fun!
March 17-18: St. Patrick’s Day Tournament
The St. Patrick’s Day tournament was the first sanctioned tournament that Houston Sword Sports has ever run. Coach Liz 3d printed the medals.
April 13: Coach Caroline’s Last Day
Coach Caroline was our first hire. She was an invaluable member of our team, working in several schools and also maintaining our website. We were sad to see her go, but glad that she landed somewhere great.
April 28: Oscar Woolnough at the Wheelchair World Cup
HSS fencer Oscar Woolnough is also a member of the British National Wheelchair Fencing team. In April, he competed in a world cup in Canada. We got his bout to play on one of the scoring machine tablets and gathered round to cheer him on.
May 12: Spring School Championships
We close each semester with our School Championship tournament. Kids from all over Houston competed to win individual medals and the Golden Mask for their school.
June 18: EnPointe Wireless Strip
In June we received one of the first wireless strips produced by EnPointe. This little device replaces reels and costs about as much as traditional reels.
Summer 2018: Summer Camps
Our summer camps continue to grow. This year we offered full-and half-day camps. In the mornings, we did foil; in the afternoons we did stage combat. At the end of the week, the kids put on a show for their parents.
August 18: Fete de Lune
The Fete de Lune is a long-running tradition in the Gulf Coast section. This popular veterans tournament is known for its fantastic medals and friendly atmosphere, plus a banquet after the tournament. We took over running the tournament from Clear Lake Fencing Club and had a great time. This was our largest and most ambitious tournament to date.
September 14: First Nerd Night
Not everything we do is so serious! In September we kicked off a monthly Nerd Night, a gathering of like-minded nerds to play tabletop games of various types. For our first Nerd Night we played Dungeons and Dragons. About a quarter of the 20-some participants had never played before. Asgard Games sponsored the evening and provided game materials and HSS-themed dice.
September 5: Demo at HCC Stafford
This was our second demo at Houston Community College. This time, the college’s TV station sent a crew to cover it!
September 29: South Texas Challenge
Our fencers traveled to more tournaments this year, and we started sending coaches to more tournaments. Here’s Coach Dan giving advice to Audrey Toffelmire.
October 11: Diana Caitlin Mayerich born
The newest member of the Houston Sword Sports family joined us a little earlier than expected. Coach Liz’s new daughter Diana is already being groomed for a great future in our sport.
October 20-21: The Swiss Open
In October we experimented with the Swiss format, which is popular in chess and Magic: The Gathering tournaments. We kept with the Swiss theme by offering fondue, and the prizes were Swiss cheese and chocolate.
December 1: Fall School Championships
The Fall School Championship was our biggest yet! Lycee International de Houston took the overall prize, the Golden Mask, for the third time in a row.
December 16: Eureka Heights Invitational
We closed the year with a new brewery tournament, this one at Eureka Heights. Our long-term goal is to have a brewery circuit of four to six tournaments in different breweries. Eureka Heights was a great venue, and a great step in that direction!
On to 2019!
This Spring we’ve added two more schools for a total of 12, and we’re planning to add even more in the Fall. We’re also adding more summer camps in more locations. We hope you’ll make Houston Sword Sports a big part of your 2019, too.
Light Saber Combat: Houston’s Jedi in Training
Fencers, by and large, are a nerdy bunch. We all have our own theories about why this is, some of which are flattering (you have to be clever!) and some less so. Whatever the reason, it’s definitely true at Houston Sword Sports. Our members include the owners of a local gaming shop, the head of a Cosplay company, and gamers of various stripes.
You could say that we are pretty into Star Wars, too.
Coach Liz did Rey hair for the Light Saber class. It fits under a mask better than Leia buns.
We really wanted to celebrate the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. We know that these movies in particular have brought a lot of people to fencing – it’s about as close as you can get to being a Jedi in this galaxy. So, we decided to let people fully unleash their inner padawan learners and create their own light saber fights. On the Friday before Episode VIII’s release, we hosted a Light Saber Combat class!
Episode 1: The Younglings
Master Dan works with the younglings, teaching them to move like Jedi.
Our first class was open to kids ages 6-12, or more appropriately, the Younglings. About half of the kids in the group had never tried fencing of any kind before, so we started out with some movement exercises. A big difference between fencing and stage combat is that in fencing we rarely move side-to-side, but in stage combat we move in many different directions. In the picture above, the group works on moving side-to-side and forward and backward smoothly.
The younglings receive their training weapons.
We don’t have welding helmets and little bots that shoot blasters at you, but we do have fencing masks. While our training sabers are a) not lasers and b) soft and padded, it still isn’t great to get hit in the face with one, so we made the kids wear masks. When we first handed out the sabers, we had them all work while spread out so they could swing the weapons around without worrying about hitting or being hit.
Next step: learning to fight
Next, we taught the kids how to attack each other and defend themselves. In stage combat, practicality isn’t as much of an issue as it is in sport fencing, so we could teach some of the less-used parries like the one above, the saber version of parry 6, also known as “the coaches’ parry” (because only coaches use it).
The younglings begin putting together their fight scenes.
Once we’d given them the basic building blocks of the scene, it was time to start writing their own fight sequences. Here, we divided them into pairs and they began working on their fights together.
We had a nice little stage for the fights, even if the scenery was a bit anachronistic.
At the end of the class, the kids put on little skits with the choreography they’d worked on. Here’s one of our favorites:
Episode 2: Padawan Learners
Our teen/adult class was smaller than the youth class, and some of the students were a little old to be called padawans, but then so were Anakin and Luke. We followed a similar format, but were able to go more in-depth because the participants had more fencing experience.
First, they learned to move.
Then, Dan showed them how to hit him.
Then, they practiced hitting each other.
Two of the guys had a head start, in that they’d studied several of the fights in the movies ahead of time to get an idea of what they wanted to do. They were able to put together this fight, which was definitely the highlight of the evening.
In all, we had a great time running this class, and the participants had a great time too. If you missed out, we’ll be doing stage combat for the afternoon session of our youth winter camp on December 29. Click here to learn more and sign up!