Hilt and Helm Winter 2023 Summary
Hey everyone! It’s time for another Hilt and Helm Quarterly Summary. This quarter was particularly packed with fun ups and downs. So sit tight, grab a scented candle and a comfy chair, because this blog post is packed with big news. Both very good, and very bad.
Blue Box Open 2023
On November 18th, 2023, Hilt and Helm trekked west to Columbus Ohio for Royal Arts Fencing Academy’s Fall Tournament: Blue Box Open 2023. Club officer Auren competed in Open Marginalized Gender Longword, Julia and I competed in Open Mixed Military Saber, and I competed in Tier A Longsword. This was a particularly memorable event for all of us. For me, Blue Box 2018 was the first ever medal I’d earned in a large tournament. For Julia., Blue Box 2022 was her first ever longsword / saber tournament and I was there to emotionally support her. This year would be Auren’s first tournament and Julia would be there to emotionally support her. Me to, but … ya know. It’s not the same. They’re dating each other.
Auren opened up the event swords - a - blazing by winning her first ever competitive longsword match! She would later go on to take 5th in the tournament.
Julia and I faired pretty well in Saber. I had 4 wins and 2 losses. The first loss was to JW Pugnetti. No surprises there, but my second loss was an upset I’d never expected! Alex Willette was a face I’d seen on the fencing scene several times. We’d never fought before but the kid had a pretty recognizable face and fencing kit. I’d never really watched him fight before so when I saw him facing off against JW I figured this would be a pretty obvious win for Mr. Pugnetti. What I saw instead was astounding! This kid was faster than greased lighting. He slid into range and tore poor JW’s hands up like a textile mill from the 1920’s! At one point Alec was up 6-0 and then JW got serious. It was a slow come back at first. One point here, two points there, but by the end of the fight JW had ripped victory from the jaws of defeat, and that young man seriously earned my respect. I then went on to fight him and discovered for myself exactly how fast and accurate he was. I didn’t go quietly into that good night, but he did beat me quite handily. Afterwards I congratulated him on his win, gave him a very hard to kill sticker, and said he fought well for an 18 year old. He then told me he was 16! Literally less than half my age! I swear to God I aged to death and died on the spot. It was hard to find but I got a video clip of the moment.
In the end I was knocked out by Thomas Kesler. The last time we fought, I’d beaten him at “Duel for the Jewel” to get 1st place in side sword. Our fight was super tight, both of us walking into sudden death with 5 points each. In the end I faked high and went for his leg for an easy 1 pointer, but having fought me before he knew this trick. He slipped the leg and went for my head. Although I did still get him, the point differential went in his favor and he deservedly won the match. He later went on to tie for 3rd, I got 6th, and once again, my old friend JW would up on top with 1st place.
1st Place: JW Pugnetti. 2nd Place: Alex Willette. 3rd Place: Brandon Zipplinger and Thomas Kesler
In Tier A longsword I had similar luck going 4 wins and 2 losses in the pools. Of those wins, there was one in particularly cool! Against my fight against Alex Kellog, I managed to not only win with a sick ass thrust, but my sword got caught in his arm pit, popped out of my hand, I caught it, and pulled of a slice as I spun out of the way!
Going into eliminations, I was ultimately thwarted by Derek Ray. Back in 2018, Derek had just started competing in longsword events and I’d been at it for about 3 years at that point. We were especially drawn to each other because we were two of the few people of color at these things. That little detail aside, I also had a dope ass mask and he asked for a picture which I happily agreed to. We would meet later that day when we fought for 3rd place where I … kinda beat his ass.
Derek Ray and I first meeting at Queens Court Open 2018.
During pools I once again beat him, but this time it was much more difficult. When we fought again during eliminations our fight was very close. I was down by 1 point and I was determined to get a thrust at his chest. I’d made the mistake of going low against Thomas Kesler and I wasn’t going to make that error again. I waited for the right moment and launched at him! But he knew that was my plan. As I thrust forward, he went backwards and cut at my hand, securing his victory. He would then go on to win the Tier A Gold medal. I’m most definitely proud of how far he has come since we first met! Overall I wound up in 6th again.
1st Place: Derek Ray. 2nd Place: Samuel Ryals. 3rd Place: Seanpatrick Brady and Branden Zipplinger
Lake E-Fecht 2023
On December 1st, Hilt and Helm travelled up to Erie Pa for Steel Head Western Martial Art’s second tournament: Lake E-Fecht. In addition to the usual Hilt and Helm suspects: Julia, Auren, and myself, we had a whole bunch of Pittsburgh folks joining us as well as some old Pittsburgh folks who moved to New York to found Rodchester Historical Fencing!
Pictured left to right, Jaime McClean, Keenan McClean, Chris Shelton, JW Pugnetti, Rhys Grayson, Mary McConnel, Wesley Halstead, Anthony Cavaline, and Kevin Brough
The rules for this tournament we a little different than usual. There would be 5 exchanges per fight, only pools, and scoring was based on point differentials, as in the difference between your score and your opponents at the end of the match was the only deciding factor in your ascension through the ranks. Personally, I’m not a fan of these types of rulesets. How well you do in pools is completely up to the whims of fate in terms of who you’re fighting and how warmed up you get. It basically elevates those who are able to completely shut out their opponents, and doesn’t give you a way to claw your way back up through the ranks if you have a few bad calls. Further more when you only have 5 exchanges, a few bad calls from the judges can really make or break your ability to do well. Mind you, these are minor complaints. There was nothing about these rules that would have prevented me from wanting to participate. It just means you have less room to mess up and you have to really sell your hits to the judges if you want credit. And let’s just say I had one judge in particular who was much more difficult to impress than the other’s I’ve had to contend with.
I understand that competant judges are hard to find, but there was one judge who was just not getting it that day and it messed up my scores during my early fights. I was later able to be a bit more convincing, but by that time I’d had too many losses and too many of my points not counted to fair well that tournament. Still though, I had a great time and an especially great match against Jaime McClean.
Jaime and I go back a log ways. I remember when she first started doing HEMA and she was always very nervous. Yet I always encouraged her to do her best. When we squared up against each other, I was expecting an easy victory. After all, I’m one of the people who initially taught her. But she has grown exponentially more difficult to fight since the last time we squared up. At one point during our fight, her sword got locked up in my ring cross guard and I knew was was about to happen next! I rotated by sword to lock hers in place. I rose my right hand up. Grabbed her strong with my left hand. Unlocked her sword. And my tip swung my back to deliver the dreaded BEE STING! I was so confident I had her, that it wasn’t until my point missed it target that I realized what had happened! She pivoted to my right to avoid my point and pommeled my face to score two points of her own. It wasn’t until much later that I realized what had happened. She pulled it off!!! The dreaded counter to the Bee Sting … THE EPI-PEN!!
Although I didn’t do super well, Julia and Kevin came away with their first ever medals from for-real-zies fencing tournaments! Julia placed 2nd in ABCD (Anyone But Cis Dude) Longsword and Kevin took 3rd in Open Longsword!
Amelia Deacon, Auren Butler, Chris Shelton, Julia Holfelder, and Anthony Cavalline celebrating Julia’s first ever medal!
Unicorn Cup 2024
On January 20th, Hilt and Helm Fencing Club launched its first ever for-real-zies longsword tournament: Unicorn Cup 2024. Leading up to it was a whole bunch of stress and issues though so lets break stuff down into 4 sections: the Plan, the Preparation, the Problems, and the Product.
The Plan
We were to hold the tournament at the Boys and Girls Club in Lawrenceville. There would be some snacks, sandwiches, cookies, and desserts, but if people were really hungry there were a whole bunch of restaurants in the neighborhood they could walk to from the venue. The morning would begin with open longsword, break for lunch at noon, have a fashion show at 1 pm, followed by gender minority longsword and invitational longsword at 2 pm. At 7 pm, we would adjourn to Lovev brewery for the awards ceremony. There were medals for places 1-8 for each tournament, a sash for the fashion show winner, and cups with the event logo on it for the gold medalists.
The Preparations
The Rings
For the Unicorn Cup, we’d planned to have foam mats act as the rings for our tournament. The plan was for rings that were 16’ by 16’, so we purchased the mats months in advance and set them up for Pillowfecht 5: Stabbin’ to the Oldies. Buying enough mats to fill the center would have been cost prohibitive, but just buying the perimeter allowed us to give the fighters a tactile feed back on when they were getting close to the edge of the ring.
Proposed Rings for Unicorn Cup
On paper we had accomplished what we set out for. The only problem was that the OUTER diameter was 16’ but the inner was only 14’. From this lesson we learned to buy an additional 4 mats per ring to ensure the fighters had enough room.
The Tournament Software
I’ve been to enough tournaments where problems with the software controlling it lead to major delays, so we went with Ferrotas for a couple of reasons. It synchronizes fighter payment, registration, pool seeding, display screen, bracket creation, gives up to the minute updates on tournament status, shows fighter statistics, and has traceable records of every tournament run on it. Literally every aspect of running a tournament can be handled from this one website!
It does have its drawbacks though. All payments get aggregated at the end of biweekly periods and sent to your paypal or bank account in chucks, meaning that if someone needs a refund you have to handle that yourself. Kicking someone from the before the tournament happens requires the Ferrotas admin to perform it manually. And of course it requires access to the internet, so if your internet connection is spotty you may have issues with it running on the day of your tournament.
To resolve these potential issues, we took a 3 pronged approach.
Familiarization with Ferrotas. Julia spent a few hour long sessions with the Ferrotas administrator to thoroughly learn how to use the system. We then tested out that familiarilzation at Pillowfecht 5 with outstanding results.
Proper Documentation and Training. We put together a how to guide any potential table staff member needed to read and familiarize themselves with before the tournament so they did not have to figure things out on the day of. We also published a blog post detailing what all volunteers were expected to do, where they needed to be, what they should know before hand, and how much we were paying them. We had a virtual meeting a few weeks before so everyone could ask questions and make sure they were on the same page.
Plan Contingencies. We had 3 layers of continency plans for if Ferrotas went down.
Plan A: Just use Ferrotas.
Plan B: If Ferrotas goes down in the middle of a match, use the manual score boards and a cell phone to time out the rest of the match.
Plan C: If Ferrotas goes down and we can’t get it back up, switch to the automated systems. For this I created an excel spread sheet with linked cells and pool templates for 4-8 fighter pools to automatically generate a list of fights which minimizes the number of times a fighter has to fight twice in a row. I also created a VBA powered Powerpoint Slide Presentation with interactive buttons to change scores, reset points, and cycle through the fights provided by the excel spread sheet.
Plan D: If the computers or the TV monitors fail, just use the manual score boards and the fight list would be printed on site.
Our VBA powered Tournament Score Board with buttons to change scores and cycle through each pool fight.
The Problems
The Elephant in the Room
Before the tournament had even started, a specific fencer (which we are going to call “the elephant” for privacy’s sake) had signed up and the mere thought of them fighting in the tournament raised some hackles. A few fencers asked me to consider banning them. Although the allegations were severe, all I had to go on were rumors. The schism that caused Hilt and Helm to split from the club that shall not be named started with someone being banned from a tournament for capricious reasons. That is not to minimize the severity of the allegations against the elephant, but if a ban is to be handed out before the event even begins there needs to be evidence that the staff can review, verify for authenticity, and cite in an official statement as not to appear to be bowing solely to the whims of a few outspoken individuals.
Then the evidence came in. And it was … damning. Before I was able to begin verifying it for authenticity, the elephant withdrew from the tournament. I believe everyone is capable of redemption, but the evidence spoke to a long history of problematic behavior that doesn’t right itself over night. I just hope that they recognize the severity of the impact their actions have had and make real strides in the future to ensure these behaviors are not repeated. I’m not sure if they’ll ever be welcome in the HEMA community again, but only time will tell.
I mention this because I want anyone who plans to attend one of our events who knows of someone whose attendance would jeopardize the safety of their fellow participants to feel confident that their protestations will be taken seriously. On the other hand I want anyone who has an allegation lobbed at them to know that I will investigate thoroughly before making decisions on who is or isn’t allowed to attend our events.
The Snow
A few days before the tournament was supposed to happen, a winter weather advisory was put into effect. The meteorologists were expecting between 5 to 10 inches of snow and the participants were justifiably freaked out. We had a few people withdraw from the tournament out of fear and it almost gave me a panic attack. What if I’m going to have to postpone the tournament? What if I’m going to have to issue a slew of refunds? We’d already spent a bunch of the proceeds from the tournament. This kinda thing could have really tanked us as a club. I issued a statement on discord that if it did snow we would attempt to postpone the tournament to the following week and would issue refunds to those who couldn’t make it to the new date. We advised everyone that if they could not make it due to the weather that they would absolutely be given a refund. This communication set the participant’s minds at ease and thankfully we got less than an inch of snow so none of my contingencies needed to be enacted.
The Peak-A-Boo Bug
There was supposed to be an early bird registration discount of $20 applied to all registrants. We found out from some early birds that the discount wasn’t being applied. After working with the Ferrotas administrator the discount was later applied, but for some reason those who saw the initial price couldn’t see the discounted price and there was nothing that could be done about it on the back end. We called the issue “The Peak-A-Boo” bug and told registrants that if they were charged full price they could have either a free tote bag or water bottle as recompense.
The Product
The Photos
If a picture is worth a thousand words; our in house photographer Paul Wintruba from Scrimshaw Media wrote an epic with his camera. Check out this awesome gallery of his excellent photos! The full gallery can be seen here, but here are my favorite action shots.
Here are the highlights from the fashion show!
Here are some highlights of people just enjoying the tournament.
Here are a couple of my favorite shows of me in my bright pink suit!
Here are some other photos of people enjoying afterparty at Lolev Brewery!
Overall I was super happy with how the tournament turned out. Even with a half hour delay due to technical difficulties, we were able to finish 1 hour early! There was one issue I wanted to address though. For privacy’s sake I’m going to refer to this individual as “Coach”.
Coach was not a fighter, but was a spectator at the tournament. In their “enthusiasm”, they committed several actions which taken individually could be considered the harmless, but when taken collectively throughout the day in congruence with multiple failed attempts to curb their behavior through civil diplomacy, a complete denial of accountability, and a heated argument with the tournament organizer have resulted in a one year ban from our events. The list of their transgressions includes:
Coaching fighters to use excessive force.
Making disparaging remarks about their fighter’s opponents.
Failing to get out of the way of judges attempting to move around the ring
Disrespecting the judges when asked to move away from the ring.
Disrespecting the directors when asked to move away from the ring.
Disrespecting the event organizer by throwing an empty water bottle at them.
Disrespecting the event organizer by slapping their ass. Under certain situations I like a nice ass slap but consent was not given and they had been pissing me off all day. And I don’t care what anyone says I was “not asking” for it by wearing a bright pink suit and a President Barbie sash.
The ban will come under review next year at the conclusion of Unicorn Cup 2025. If sufficient contrition is shown, accountability taken for the gravity of their actions, and a good faith effort is taken to behave at future events with respect for the fighters and staff, the ban will be lifted and they can resume attendance.
Ok, now that that’s out of the way, let’s end on a positive note. Although 55 fighters from 5 different states traveled out to participate in our tournament, a whopping 6 medals were retained by members of the club!
Eric McChesney - 3rd place Open Longsword
Tony Cavalline - 6th place Open Longsword
Jesse May - 8th place Open Longsword
Auren Butler - 3rd place Gender Minority Longsword
Rhys Grayson - 7th place Invitational Longsword
Kevin Brough - 8th place Invitational Longsword
Considering that last year Hilt and Helm brought home 11 medals, we’re off to an even better start this year with the tournament season just getting started!
The Bad News
After riding the high of pulling off a successful tournament, we were suddenly struck with some pretty terrible news: the owner of the building we have been training in since our inception had decided not to renew the lease. This was especially devastating because our current location has been the birth place or crash pad of every HEMA club in Pittsburgh. It’s where Broken Plow got it’s start, where Steel City went after it lost the fire hall and had that horrid stint in the flexible work space, and its where we got our start to. I was pretty morose for about 3 days after I found out. I thought briefly that this might be the end of Hilt and Helm. I mused about what my life would be like without fencing as my physical outlet. Would I pick up guitar? Stand up comedy? Become an IPA enthusiast? Start baking artisanal bread? I imagined myself at a game night talking about some mundane ass hobby, and when I snapped out of it, I flipped the imaginary table and said “Screw this! I’m gonna go stab people!” and stormed out of the imaginary game night.
I’ve been doing HEMA for 10 years, I aint gonna stop because of a little set back like this. In the two weeks since I found out and wrote this blog post we’ve already secured a month to month contract at a recreation center we can use, but more importantly we have our eyes on a commercial lease that would give the club its very own brick and morter location. No longer would we have to juggle schedules with another fencing club to use the space. Everyone would be able to leave their gear at the club! We’d have an office to sell merch and enough space to put on a tournament without having to rent another space! It would be accessible, so people with mobility issues wouldn’t have to climb 8000 God damned steps just to join practice. Three words …. on … street … parking! This is our plan. It’s gonna be expensive, but it’ll give the club the room it needs to grow. And thankfully the club is headed up with someone with more money than common sense, so as long as I draw breathe (and a salary) my people shall not long for an indoor place to practice. To show people my devotion to ensuring this club’s survival, I got a little something I’ve always wanted.
In the next blog post, I’ll write in depth about my adventures in commercial real estate. Until then, keep and eye out for Hilt and Helm’s House Warming Party which will celebrate our successful move into our new space!
