Local Boy Takes Down Number 3

     On Sunday March 13th, I competed nationally in a Div II event. What that means is very complicated but basically I competed against much better and much older fencers. There are usually five large national events a year. There are four during the main season and then one at the end of the season on the fourth of July that we call summer nationals. Conveniently, one of those four "in-season" tournaments was in Salt Lake City. In the past I had to travel to Kansas city, Richmond and even Reno for events of this size. The tournament lasted four days, certain events on each day and I invited my friends to come down and watch. My events Thursday and Monday were great but not very interesting. But today I am going to tell you about my Div II fencing Sunday. Which by the way was some of my best fencing ever.
     Usually men's foil events are the first event of the day, which means we normally have to be there by 7:00. But on Sunday, God was on my side and we didn't have to start until 1:00. I woke up at around 10:00 and I was ready for an amazing day. I ate a large breakfast and made my way to the Salt Palace in SLC, the convention center the event was being held at. I checked in and stated warming up. After running around the gym and stretching, I suited up with one of my friends and we started running a practice bout, or match. After some brief smack talk we started hitting each other. Probably the only good part of wearing all that gear, other than getting killed, is how fast we warm up. My regular friends showed up slightly later and it was showtime!
     As explained in previous pools, a tournament basically works like this: you are put in a group and you fence everyone in said group (pools), you then are placed into a direct elimination bracket based on how well you did in pools. The only difference between this structure and the structure of a normal tournament was that in this national event there were twenty five pools. I was placed in a pool of six fencers including myself, each of these fencers I hadn't met previously while traveling. Knowing it was Div II, I didn't have very high expectations but I ended up winning two of my five bouts which I was proud of.
    Seeded 67th our of pools, I knew I was going to have my first match be relatively easy, and then I would go up against someone very highly seeded. I was first matched up with someone around number 40. I ended up winning that match 15-11, so not extremely difficult. I quickly learned I would be going up against the third seeded fencer. I knew my time was up and I was headed towards my doom.  You know your parents think you're screwed when they say, "have fun Bryce, think of it like fun, you have nothing to lose." This boy attacked me hard four times in a row faster than I could blink. At this point, my parents weren't the only ones who thought I was screwed. Something clicked in my head and I started actually fencing. Seventeen points later I beat him 15-6.
     At this point I was in the top 32, and my legs were killing me. I now had to fence number 5, a fencer from NYC. He was up on me 10-4 and I could barely walk. I called my medical brake because If I was gonna lose, I wasn't gonna lose because my legs wouldn't let me fence. I called my medical break and laid on the strip in agony as the medical guy did his thing.

After my ten minutes was up, it was time to fence again. Even though I couldn't even take a step. I had a massive comeback and ended up losing 15-13. So as I heard from some random guys from California, "local boy takes 32, pretty awesome."