I won’t actually continue Bratislava as the last bit of the story is basically just my teammates, coaches and parents all having a giant snowball before we left. Word of advice – British and Russian people are extremely good at snowball fights so I wouldn’t challenge them if you’re inexperienced  like me.

Today I am going to talk about my last tournament which was a collegiate tournament. There are two different circuits I compete on. The collegiate one where I fence for Penn State and a national team, one where I fight for World Team spots. I recently experienced my first ever collegiate meet at Temple University. The coaches choose four girls and guys for their weapon to represent PSU at this competition and I was chosen to go as a freshman which was pretty cool. In preparation for this competition I had to take an entire practice to fix all my weapons, body cords and any other fencing stuff I needed. This took so long because I had to completely take apart and build 2 new weapons so I would meet the correct amount of required working blades. We were also issued our PSU warmups and winter coats for this competition.

Since the women’s event was on a Saturday, the van that we took to Temple left Friday mid afternoon. This doesn’t sound bad but imagine eleven people plus our equipment in a tiny van for four hours. It’s hot and crammed and if you fall asleep your teammates will post it on their snapchat story, which I learned the hard way. The worst thing about this van ride though was what we had to wear. The coaches are very traditional so they always want us to “Dress for success” to tournaments which means your in a van in a dress, heels and full makeup for hours on end. It could definitely  be worse but it isn’t the most fun I’ve had.

The competition itself was a PSU sweep with us medalling in everything but saber and taking three medals in epee, gold, silver and bronze. Immediately after the tournament was over the girls packed up their bags and left to go home, I stayed an extra night as my dad was in town. This was fun but also meant that I had to stay and watch our men’s team compete the next day and ride home with eight sweaty boys on the way home. This turned out to actually be pretty fun however I hope next time there will be other girls there with me.