Swim Meet and State Fencing

Last week and this past weekend were BUSY. I posted this a week ago with the following 4 photos:

Diving skill is genetic as proved by Charlie’s first dive. (I’m a HORRIBLE diver. 🤷🏼‍♂️🙃) But he got better with each event last night! He earned 2 “personal best” ribbons in the 25 and 50 free, taking FOUR SECONDS off of his best 25 yard time from last year! He knocked his 50 free time from 49 seconds down to 46.55 last night.

Here are the pics that corrospond with that writing, and you can see Charlie get better dive-after-dive:

Looking much better by this point!

Then on Saturday, Henry had TEAM State Fencing. His 4-man high school team fell short and was 5th out of 7 in the state.

The following day was INDIVIDUAL State Fencing, and my wife and I got up early and got out to the suburbs at 6:30 to help set up the gym for fencing (as the team tournament was in a different location than this individual tournament):

Just starting to mark the strips with tape.


My wife and Kundan checking for straightness.

Then it was a big day of fencing! I posted this:

The state fencing tournament marks the end of fencing season! Henry faced a tough pool, and got through it with 3 wins and 2 losses. In bracket play, he earned a bye in the first round, and won 15–10 in the second round. He faced his (tall) buddy Hudson in the third round where they started evenly (4-4 at one point) before Hudson ran away with the win.

Henry finished 33rd in the state tournament 2 years ago, 23rd last year, and 13th today! Progress!

And I love this first pic of Henry getting a touch on the opponent's shoulder:

Busier gym!






Henry and Hudson after Hudson destroyed him in bracket play.

Both boys are still doing "club" fencing, but the official high school season is done for Henry. He likes fencing for his club a lot, so hopefully he can make some strides over this next year and do even better next year in his sophomore year of high school fencing!