Bindi and I are always looking for an activity for Lili and Eleri to do together. Lili is still Eleri’s best friend, but it is hard to find the time since they are in different schools. There is a good fencing program here in Shanghai provided by Shanghai Dragon Fencing. However, there is a time and dollar commitment with the gear and all. The Community Center was offering a 7 lesson program by the same group – perfect to see if they like it. Well, they love it! The class consist of 6 kids – 4 boys and 2 girls. The class was held on Friday at 4:30 (not the best time).
I took photos of our little fencer one day as I had the SLR camera at school. Here she is showing the coach the various positions and moves.
All geared up.
In this class, the gear is a plastic sword.
Lili and Eleri had very good form and balance. Maybe all that gymnastic has finally paid off!!
At the last class, there was a fencing tournament. I had completely forgotten, but I did have my pocket camera in my bag. I took a few photos, but video taped most of her matches. No video posted until Jim has time as that is out of my technology ability!
For this tournament, each match lasted 2 minutes. At the end of the 2 minutes, if there was a tie, the coach used official fencing rules. A coin is tossed and the winner has priority. Having priority means if no one scores, the person with priority wins the match. Overtime was 20 seconds. Since I am not up on my official fencing rules, the time given to our kids may have been shorter to get through all the matches.
Eleri had four matches. In three of the matches, the match ended in a tie. In all three tie matches, Eleri lost the coin toss each time to give the opponent priority. In all three matches, Eleri scored in 20 seconds to win the match. Eleri won all four of her matches.
Eleri won the tournament as she was the only one to win all four of the matches.
It looks like we will be investing time into fencing. Lili loves it too! The Shanghai Dragon Fencing is opening a new facility around Chinese New Year in Jinqiao. The old facility was WAY out so Eleri will begin when the new facility is ready – On Gaurde!