Welcome, fencers near and far, to LIGHTSPEED ATTACK, Lightspeed’s 5th annual national tournament! For the second year in a row, nationals is hosted at Lightspeed Saber Academy’s home base, Westminster, CA.
The event began yesterday with some group workshops and footwork drills, but tonight the tournament really kicked off with the first competitions of the week: Control Point, Team Duet, and the Ren Exclusive.
CONTROL POINT
First, making its debut appearance this morning, was the new Control Point game developed by Supreme Leader Cang Snow. Teams in Control Point aren't competing in points; they're fighting against the clock. Each team has a five-minute clock, and both are hoping to be the first to get it to zero. The two-team set up pits fencer against fencer as they try to guard the other team's buzzer from being activated or push through their defense and switch the countdown over to their side. It is a game of finesse and speed -- clean hits grant a bonus deduction from your own clock, but messy fighting can cause you to be eliminated, losing your team precious time while your teammate runs to take your place. Confused? Check out the stream here and take a look!
The match for gold began with Blue team (José, Will, Nate, and Em) starting the clock and defending the space for almost 45 seconds, creating a lead that Red team (Tony, Dinah, Preston, and A.J.) struggled to recover from. Even so, Red team held the line for the first half. Each time the distance got too high, Red team would close the gap with a series of successful skill shots, each one taking between 7 and 21 seconds off their time. They kept pace until Blue team captain José Ortiz-Miranda brought his team’s clock under one minute, gaining an even larger lead against Red team who had almost three minutes still remaining on their clock. Despite some nice recovery from Red team, Will Alonzo bought the last two seconds needed for Blue to win, closing the game at 0:00 against 1:14. With that, Blue team became the first winning team of nationals! Congrats, Frog Insurance!
TEAM DUET
We moved on to the Team Duet fights, where teams of two fought each other in six one-on-one matches: the first four are for each fencer to fight both members of the other team, while the final two matches are a surprise. Who fights each other in the last two matches is picked in secret by each team and is only revealed when they step into the box.
Two early standouts were Demonic Butterflies (Chicco Smith and Patricia Bauler) and Rogues (José Ortiz-Miranda and A.J. Enesco). Smith and Bauler made an early rise through the bracket with a combination of astounding speed and expert form and defenses. Rogues, made up of last year’s Weapon Master Ortiz-Miranda and newcomer Enesco, made an impact with Ortiz-Miranda’s reliable mastery paired with Enesco’s explosive debut after only taking a couple of classes at the Academy.
After Rogues’ first win they went on to defeat Beauty and the Beast (Tony Zaldua and Samantha Kolasa), sending Rogues to the fight for gold and leaving Zaldua and Kolasa with a bronze medal. Demonic Butterflies was ultimately taken out by the Non-Losers (Chris Isom and Nate Maniscalco), who, true to their name, went on to fight Rogues for gold.
Both teams fought very well, Rogues pulling a bit ahead during the first four rounds. By the end of Maniscalco and Enesco’s second fight, the fifth of the six rounds, Rogues was leading 50-35. In the last match of the competition, determining who would get the gold medal, last year’s Weapon Master Ortiz-Miranda faced off against last year’s National Champion Isom.
With three counterattacks from Isom he closed the 15-point lead that Rogues had on the Non-Losers, bringing the match to 60-60 with seven seconds on the clock. The timer ended at a 63-63 tie, moving the game into overtime where Isom got the final hit and won the Non-Losers the gold medal with a final score of 66-63. This brought Rogues’ Enesco a silver in Teams for his first Lightspeed tournament after joining the league less than a month ago.
Ortiz-Miranda, on fighting against (and with) some of Lightspeed’s newer faces, said: “It’s an experience that wasn’t like last year. This year’s fighters are top-notch. Everyone’s pulling out the stops; you don’t know who you’re going to fight. Lightspeed might find new champions this year.”
Isom, asked about his win from the floor, simply said: “It didn’t take anything. It took everything,” and then joked, “I looked up and said ‘God, it’s time for a miracle.’” This was no divine intervention -- he revealed that his huge comeback in the last match was from a move he had been working on since last year’s nationals that he finally brought out to ultimately win his team gold.
Gold: Non-Losers (Chris Isom and Nate Maniscalco)
Silver: Rogues (José Ortiz-Miranda and A.J. Enesco)
Bronze: Beauty and the Beast (Tony Zaldua and Samantha Kolasa)
REN EXCLUSIVE
The final tournament of the night was the Ren Exclusive. Fresh off their Team matches, Chris Isom and José Ortiz-Miranda joined the rest of the evening fencers to compete for the Ren Exclusive pool. The top eight fencers from the pools moved forward into brackets, where Isom and Ortiz-Miranda moved up alongside Tony Zaldua and Ryan McKenna in the top four. Isom pulled ahead of Zaldua, bringing him back in a familiar fight for gold, and Ortiz-Miranda, after a tough match that ended 8-7, joined him once again. Zaldua and McKenna fought for bronze, with Virginia’s Saber Light Knight McKenna bringing home the medal with a final score of 11-9.
Isom and Ortiz-Miranda got their gold medal rematch, with Isom starting strong with a defensive. Ortiz-Miranda caught up quickly and eventually won the match with a defensive of his own, bringing the final score to 16-8.
Gold: José Ortiz-Miranda
Silver: Chris Isom
Bronze: Ryan McKenna
All fencers in the Ren Exclusive tournament are currently in the running to win the title of Weapon Master, granted to two fencers who compete with and against at least two of the three Lightspeed weapon types: Rey, Ren, and Tano. The group might get smaller -- any fencer hoping for the title must also complete in either the Open Mixed or Women's Mixed Weapon tournaments Friday and Saturday to continue being eligible.
That’s it for Day 1! We’ll see you tomorrow for the start of the Rey Exclusive, Women’s Mixed Weapon, and Open Mixed Weapon tournaments.
Samantha Kolasa
Lightspeed Interim Reporter