The University of Glasgow Fencing Club had a successful weekend at the recent Scottish University Sport competition. The men’s team maintained last year’s form by equaling their achievements and coming second in the Scottish Conference Men’s 1A division. Meanwhile, the women’s team managed to go one better than their previous year’s performance, boosting themselves from last year’s third place and come second in the Scottish Conference Women’s 1A division.
The year’s results are all the more remarkable when analysing the strength of the previous year’s competition and teams. At the 2009 competition, the Fencing Club achieved their best results on record. But 2010 has seen the club go through a transitional period, with the men’s A team hit hard by graduations and the inevitable departure of key members of their team. Resultantly, they entered a team almost entirely comprised of “fresher” fencers, who just started university in September. Even with that disadvantage, the team managed to draw with Aberdeen 119-all, the same team who beat the 2009 Fencing team, but unfortunately they lost to a strong Edinburgh team 117-135.
On day two of the event, Glasgow beat Heriot Watt with a fairly convincing 131-116, to come out second overall. The club is proud of the men’s achievements and how far they have come in such a short period of time, with credit going to the coaches for building another competitive team.
The women’s team fielded a similarly strong performance, managing to comprehensively beat Dundee 111-104, St Andrews 124-108 and Edinburgh 133-90. Unfortunately the Aberdeen side proved too strong and beat Glasgow 108-114, causing the university’s team to miss out on first place by only 6 points. This still proved cause for celebration, however, as the result was considered a major improvement on last year’s score.
Unfortunately, the impact of graduations on the club led to Glasgow only able fielding a men’s B team of 3 people, which proved to be a challenge both mentally and physically on the team. A further loss to the club occured on Saturday, when an injured player left the B-team unable to compete.
Despite this setback , they put up a good fight and the club Captain said they “showed a lot of potential for promotion to the A team next year”. On this showing both teams will be hoping to maintain and hopefully improve on their recent form, and continue to represent the University competitively in Fencing tournaments across the UK.
