Crown Tourney #96

Me vs. Rory

I'm closing in on 100 Crown Tournaments. I'd better win that second one soon.

As I wrote on FaceBook, I did not meet any of my goals for this Crown. I did not win more fights than I lost. Usually, having a winning record in a double elim means going to the 5th round. Because they had some early elimination bouts, and because they were calling rounds in the loser's bracket separately from the winner's bracket, I think I officially went to ether 6th or 7th round, but I only had four fights, making me 2 and 2. I did not kill any chivalry. I did not get to semi-finals. I did not win. Those are my benchmarks, and I didn't achieve any of them.

But it was an awesome day!

I fought really really well. All of my fights were against really good opponents, and all of them were epic. Three of them -- against Rory, Arne, and Avaldr -- were against legit contenders, and Luther is damn close. I totally had a blast in all my fights. I am also satisfied with both my preparation and my performance. There's room for improvement, particularly in my on-side defense and power generation and targeting with that weight/balance of sword. But I know where I need to improve. My offense and footwork were working really well.

Plus, Gracia was there to watch me champion her, and we hung out with our new family/household and had a really good time. And one more thing, that's below.

TECHNIQUE
You don't want to change anything before a Crown tourney. This is why, even though they are slightly heavier, I stuck with my bauzbands instead of repairing my lighter leather arm harness, and put off making my new legs and new shield till after Crown (the shield will be about an inch shorter, but better balanced). I didn't want to change what I was doing. But my sword died and I needed a new one. I didn't have quite as light a piece of rattan as I'd used before, and I wanted to use my Michael of Bedford style basket hilt. The sword I made was maybe an inch longer in (the blades are the same length but the basket hilt is different, so it's effectively longer), but it's much better balanced. This may have affected my fighting a bit, but nobody had been taking wraps from the light sword I'd been using, so it was probably a wash. Gui thinks I should cut an inch off of it. I like the new sword a lot. I turned the blade aorund on the other one in case I needed a backup but I never used it.

The big deal about my technique was that I had really moved away from the A-Frame. I was fighting almost exclusively in a High closed form, like in the picture above. This is obvious when you look at how I died. In the last few tournaments, I had been dying mostly to off-side shots or slot shots. I adjusted to a high closed guard to better defend the off-side. both of my deaths were to on-side head shots, little molinees from high over my shield.

WORKOUTS
As you should, I dialed down my training in the week before Crown. I didn't fight at all last week. i didn't run every day. I Friday and Saturday I didn't even do pell work, just my push ups and squats. That's what a lot of boxers do, let themselves heal and recover from all the training they've been doing.

FIGHTS
I warmed up with Horic, which was great. It just got the blood flowing and got me in the right head space.

Standing in Line next to Duke Randal, I remarked that It was silly to have Luther as the second in line, because he is really a chiv-level fighter. He's Sir Stephan von Dresden's squire, in perfect shape, like Stephan, and has been fighting for more than a decade. He's one of those St. Adrien's guys who started out in Acre--where's he's a Duke -- but train mostly in the SCA.  Let's put it this way: he was one of our heroic champions at Pennsic last year, and he won his bout. As soon as I said that I knew it would come back to bite me, because I was second from the *end* of the line. Sure enough, Ray, who was first, challenged Randal and Luther challenged me. It was a good, tough fight. He was fast but sloppy. He tried to overwhelm me with speed but was pulling out of his shots early and was a bit wild. A real wake up for me. I got his leg with Martin the Temperate's leg shot, and once I had his leg it was done with (though i can't recall how I won the fight).

Then I sat and I sat as they whittled down the fighters to 32 for an even bracket (essentially, they front load the byes).

Speaking of whittling down, my next fight was against Rory. I had said that I was more scared of Rory than I was of Arne. Rory's defense is just so incredible that he's next to impossible to lay stick on. Arne at least gives you some openings--though with Arne you've got that incredible speed and reflex to deal with. My fight with Rory was brutal. We fought for awhile trying to break each other down, till I threw a hook thrust and took his arm. I retained my shield, as that's the custom in the East. Then I took his leg, and then I killed him. And that took a long time. He's really hard to kill.

So here's the one frustrating part about Crown, and the thing that suggests that, even though I *think* I was in a good mind set, and *think* I never lost my focus, I may be dead wrong about that. The two fighters I specifically prepared for were the two that took me out of the list. I fought both of them extremely well, but I did not crack either of them (though with Avaldr I came really close).

It was obvious at Practice that Arne was, if not sandbagging, then certainly not going full bore. I put no truck in the fact that I'd beaten him a lot the past two weeks because, as Alan Iverson put it so well, we're talking about practice. This time it was just a tight fight. My defense was where I wanted it. He didn't land an off side shot on me. My offense was good. As usual he ran away whenever I pressed him. I tried the shield hook but he got in a good sword block. I tried to press and take his leg but he stepped out of it. Eventually I pressed him and his tactic worked. He caught me with a high molinee while backing out. It was a really good fight. There's some video on FaceBook.

My fight with Avaldr was even better. I mixed in some BVellatrix technique with some high closed form. The brief moment I switched to an A Frame he threw a slot shot at my body, so I closed that off and went back to the high guard. He tried a butterfly as well but we were out of position for that. I had watched some tape of him fighting Duke Cygnus at Aedult Swim and saw that he has a window that opens up for a simple slot shot when he throws on side, and sometimes when he moves to his right. I think this is how I killed him at Birka. I slipped past his guard a couple of times, both with a saber cut and with a bellatrix combo, but didn't stick them. I managed to move his shield really well with a shield fake and some foot work, but my leg shot was a dropping wrap that hit low. Eventually, he did to me exactly what Arne did and got me with a high on-side. I'm told that he threw it extremely high with a broken wrist to get it to land.

I LOVED both of those fights. Sir William said I was in total control of the fight, Avaldr just slipped a desperation shot it. Maybe, but I need to improve my on-side defense if I use that guard. Duke Vissivald said--twice--that he thought my fight with Avldr was magnificent. That's high praise--as high as it gets.

A FURTHER WORD.
I've lived in the East now a lot longer than I had planned to when I got here. I always thought I'd go home to my home, to California and to the West, once I finished grad school. The only reason I didn't, really, is because I fell in love with Gracia. I also fell in love with the East. I will always be a Western knight, I will always have my imaginary lands, my viscounty in the Mists and my county in the West. I will always be a bard of the Mists and a Knight Banneret of the West, and a member of the Rose Lief and the Leaf of Merit and the Pied d'argent and the Order of Valor and the rest. By royal contract, I have dual fealty to both the East and the West. But my primary fealty is to the East. I made a conscious decision about twelve years ago that I was an Easterner.

In the East, the fighters come up in a specific fashion built around Pennsic (it's the same in the Midrealm). Eastern fighters train to be on the Unbelted Champions team. For an Eastern unbelt, that's the highest honor. They go to the war practices and work hard and hope they are chosen. When they are, they train with the team for months, working toward that roughly 2 minutes of glory in the champion's battle. Sometime they are on the team for years. At some point, they are admitted to the Order of the Tiger's Combattant, the East Kingdom fighting award (recently it was made a grant level award and a second AA level award was added, the Silver Tiger). Since around 1980, every fighter knighted in the East has been made an OTC first. This is the fraternity of Eastern fighters.

The whole time I've lived in the East, almost 20 years now, I've never felt like I was one of the guys. Most of the chapters of my epic happened in the West Kingdom, where I was a prince and a king, where I earned glory with the Tribe and won most of the accolades an westerner can earn before gaining a peerage. I did not have that shared history with my Eastern Brothers. I didn't train with the other knights of my era for the unbelted team, I didn't share that experience with the upcoming unbelts, and I wasn't an OTC, because usually it's given to unbelted fighters. I received My OTC on Saturday before the tournament. I'm not the first foreign made knight to get an OTC, but I think the others would agree that this makes me feel like I am truly an Eastern fighter now. I'm part of the fraternity. I am as proud and as happy receiving my OTC as I was winning crown or getting knighted. When the other members greeted me and hugged me, with huge grins on their faces, I finally felt like I belonged.

According to Gui, who had this made, these are "Arabian Tygers"

It's 81 days until Pennsic. My next time in armor will be Nutley next week.