Seething Wells Spills
Thea Antoniou
26 Mar 2024
Kingston University took on City, London University at the 2024 Varsity tournament, resulting in a loss for the fencers
This year's Varsity Fencing team competition took place on March 26 at City University London.
Kingston and City University London’s fencing teams took part in the annual Varsity tournaments, with students coming together to compete in various sports across two days.
The indoor sports, including netball, volleyball, badminton and table tennis also all took place on day one.
Ross Summers, Kingston University Fencing President said: “Honestly we all had moments that let us shine and display some of our skill, we might not have claimed a victory but we all should take pride in the individual moments that showed them what we are made of”.
Kingston University’s main weapon is epée, and the club were riding on an epée win; with a newcomer to the club, Zack Lingard, being a key competitor to lead the epee team to a victory. The epée team also consisted of club captain, James Calla, and club president Ross Summers.
Starting out with Calla opening, they were down five to two. Lingard pulled it back closing the four-point gap and taking Kingston to 10 points, leaving City behind by three, after City scored a double. Unfortunately, after this lead, the City team subbed in their left-handed foilist who then left Kingston unable to bring it back, as the gap was widening by five points each match.
Foil and sabre aren't weapons that are trained here at Kingston, so the team had three weeks of training prior to the competition, excluding two foilists who had competition and training experience before coming to the club. Sadly, these two weapons also lost, however the teams did well to score the points scored, despite their lack of training.
The results were: 16-45 to City in foil, 23-45 in epee again to City, and sabre 13-45 to City.
Whilst the overall results crowned City University as the winners, the fencers at Kingston are aiming to use this to start competing more seriously again next season, and work on their capabilities with hopes for more training sessions and entering the BUCS league.