Formerly BUSA, UEA Fencing Club competes in the BUCS Midlands League. In the past there has been both a Women's Team and a Men's Team. While the Men's Team have enjoyed great success in previous years, the Women's Team did not experience their first win until 2007/2008, however, in the same season the Women's Team got to their first ever shield match. The Men's Team have finished second in the league as well as reaching the semi-final and final of the Shield. Results from previous seasons can be found by clicking on the BUSA-Archives Page on the left of the screen. Unfortunately, no women's team was entered for 2008/2009, but friendlies are going to be organised. In the 2009/10 season we were able to enter both a Men's and Women's team who have both experienced great success during the start of the season.
Men's Team
Captain: Martin Walters
Foil:
Martin Walters
Michael Fay
Guy Moore
Tom Dalton/Ben Mansour (Reserve)
Sabre:
Martin Walters
Michael Fay
Guy Moore
Tom Dalton/Ben Mansour (Reserve)
Épée:
Joe Butler
Gianni Peluso
Tom Jolin
Martin Walters (Reserve)
The Men's team have competed in two matches in this BUCS season so far, both of which were at home. The first against Staffordshire University Men's and the second against the newly formed Nottingham Trent University Men's. With a combination of leadership from Captain Walters, one of the best teams we have had for years, support from spectators and chocolate buttons we won both matches.
In the first match against Staffordshire Walters, Moore and Fay gave us an early win with a victory in Foil games giving is a decent lead. Sabre was much closer coming down to 44-44 with all to play for in the last point with Moore bringing it back with a 12-5 victory and Fay with a 6-4 victory. Fay managed to scrape the point with some impressive footwork giving us our second win and putting us in good standing for Épée. The final of the three weapons was much closer, even with Butler, Peluso and Jolin's exceptional skill and experience in Épée the more Épée orientated Staffordshire team managed to get an early lead and eventually win the final weapon but the team managed to get more than enough points to ensure we had the overall victory 132-117.
The second match of the season against Nottingham Trent had a far more tense start. After an initial scare where Fay found that he only had diet coke rather than his normal Fencing requirement of ordinary coke he managed to keep it together after seeing Banana-Joe. During the Foil we knew it would be a far closer match, after a few initial victories (one of which included a 10-5 by our own Captain Walters) Nottingham Trent managed to catch us up and soon took the lead which they managed to keep no matter what we threw at them. In Sabre we showed them why we won the last match taking an early lead and keeping it to the end of Sabre. We knew from the start that Épée was going to be where this fixture was decided with Nottingham Trent been a mainly Épée team and with our Épée teams combined experience. In the end of the day our experience saw us through giving us the Épée victory and with that the overall victory 127-103.