In fencing, there are three distinct blades with their own rules: foil, épée, and saber. Foil is the lightest of the blades, and the target area is the torso. For épée, the blade is heavier and the target area is the entire body. Épée blades are the most rigid type of blade in comparison to the other two. Finally, the last type, saber blade, is the most flexible of the fencing blades and its target area is anything above the hips.
The day started off with junior men’s foil where only two SPA athletes were participating. These athletes were sophomores Griffin Roy and Zack Berchenko. When the meet started, Roy and Berchenko began competing in their respective pools. “[During meets] you’re in a pool of seven or eight people, where you fence all of them,” Roy said, “and that puts your seed into the database”. In their pools, both athletes performed very well, resulting in the pair having high seeds in the following round, the knockout round. Berchenko was seeded 25th, and Roy was seeded 40th.
Unlike the pools, the knockout rounds are played to 15 rather than 5. Unfortunately they were matched against each other in the second round. “I’m not very happy, mainly because it’s that sort of thing that is never good, and it’s also never fun bouncing a friend in a real tournament,” Berchenko said. After an exciting and tough fought battle, Berchenko took the win 15-11. However, in the next round, he was unable to beat the number eight seed, Jackson Toews.
On a more positive note, senior Milan Mishra performed spectacularly in the men’s junior épée. After Mishra’s pool rounds, he was heading into the knockout round ranked as the number one seed for his event. 
Overall, SPA was more than successful at the Winter Showdown. Senior Belle Weng placed 4th in women’s saber out of 30 and New Fencer Baron Bailey participated in his first event: the men’s épée. Join the fencing team on January 12 at Macalester College’s field house for the 2025 SPA invitational.
