reddoorfencing Fencing + Social Distancing, Schedule Changes

COVID-19 Schedule Changes

Due to the spread of coronavirus/COVID-19, RDF is moving to private lessons only, effective immediately.

Club members, please check your emails for details and a link to the sign up platform.

In addition to doing extra cleaning and not sharing equipment, we are trying to minimize the number of people anyone comes in contact with by entering our club. We are a small club anyway, so we feel like this is a reasonable risk-management strategy. Hopefully obviously, if you or someone in your household might be sick or in a high-risk group, please stay home! If either of the coaches might be sick, we will close the club.

If you do not feel comfortable coming to the club, we completely understand and we will work directly with members to issue refunds or pause memberships, etc.

reddoorfencing Events, Fencing + Social Distancing

Equinox Epee tournament rescheduled

Due to spread of coronavirus/COVID-19 and related closures, RDF has tentatively rescheduled the Equinox Epee tournament (originally set for March 28-29) to September 19-20, 2020. Event times remain the same.

We hope things will be relatively back to normal by then, but we will post any changes here, on facebook, on askfred.net, and will email updates to everyone preregisterd through askfred. We have yet to confirm gym availability with WDMCS, as they are understandably very busy with other things right now, but usually the gym schedule is pretty light that time of year.

We appreciate everyone’s support and hope you will still be able to join us in the fall!

reddoorfencing Tournament Results

Iowa Caucus Tournament Results

Alrighty, folks, the swords have spoken and we’re predicting Pete Buttigieg will win the Iowa caucus on Feb. 3 (even though technically the fencer representing John Delaney won the tournament – Delaney dropped out of the race yesterday)! Tied for 3rd was Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar! Then we had Tom Steyer, Michael Bennet, Joe Biden, Deval Patrick, Andrew Yang, and Bernie Sanders.

Thank you to all the campaigns that donated items to decorate our wall and our fencers! Thanks to the fencers for coming out to represent a randomly-drawn candidate! We had a lot of fun fencing to predict a caucus winner and it was nice to briefly lighten the seriousness of political issues.

Remember to caucus on Monday, Feb. 3 and good luck to all of the actual candidates!

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reddoorfencing Events

Lots of Improvement at Coaching Clinic with Gary Copeland Last Weekend

Last weekend, RDF hosted a coaching clinic led by Gary Copeland of Northern Colorado Fencers. We had 8 coaches from RDF, the Des Moines Fencing Club, the Lincoln Fencing Club, and the Omaha Fencing Club brave the blizzard and single-digit temperatures to attend, as well as quite a few student volunteers who gamely took lesson after lesson during the two-and-a-half day workshop.

Thank you to everyone who participated. We saw lots of learning and improvement, which will translate to raising the level of the sport in the Midwest. As always, we’re grateful to Gary for sharing his feedback and expertise!

reddoorfencing Tournament Results

RDF E & Under Results

Today, we held an E & Under tournament at the club. (“E” is the first level of classification or rating a fencer can earn in USA Fencing’s system [the highest being “A”], and is a rough approximation of skill/experience.) This means entries are limited to fencers who have an E rating or are unrated (U).

Five of our fencers competed; Daniel A. earned the silver medal, Lance tied for 3rd, Alex was 5th, Selathiel came in 13th in his first real (sanctioned) tournament, and Weston finished 14th. We saw a lot of close bouts, good sportsmanship, and nice fencing.

Thank you to all of the fencers, families, referees, and coaches from around Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota who came out and made it a great event! Special congratulations to Srikanth, from the Omaha Fencing Club, who earned his E20 rating!

Full results: https://askfred.net/Results/results.php?tournament_id=45786

If you’re curious about how ratings/classifications work, here’s a chart: https://askfred.net/Info/eventClass.php