2008 Summer National Championships

San Jose, CA

July 1 - July 10, 2008

Twenty eight fencers qualified to fence and represent Alliance Fencing Academy at the Summer Nationals Championships in San Jose, CA, competing in 19 events in total (15 individual and 4 team events) in epee and foil. This was the Alliance's largest representation at Summer Nationals over the past years.

We brought home 6 medals: 3 individual and 3 teams medals. Out of 28 ALL fencers, 12 came home with medals! Three (out of 4) Alliance teams reached the podium!

Congratulations to all and many thanks to all the coaches who worked hard for the past year, Alliance Coaches Andrey, Sabina, and Dasha, their assistants Dina Bazarbayeva, and Suzette Wheeler; our visiting coaches Georgiy Zazitski and his son Khariton Zazhitskiy who is now Alliance's permanents coach at the new Woodlands location!

Congratulations to our medalists!!!

Bassa, Francesca

Silver Medal, Junior Women's Epee

Brandfield-Harvey, Neely

5 place, Junior Women's Epee

Alexander Popovici

6 Place, Veterans 40 Men's Epee

Junior Women's Epee Team

Silver Medal (Francesca Bassa, Dina Bazarbayeva, Stephanie Wheeler, and Kara Collins)

Senior Women's Epee Team

Bronze Medal (Francesca Bassa, Dina Bazarbayeva, Stephanie Wheeler, and Suzette Wheeler)

Junior Men's Epee Team

Bronze Medal (Daniel Trapani, Dillon Smith, Nathan Sorensen, and Ben Freiman)

Other results earning national points

Top 16:

Michael Popovici - 10 place, Y10 Men’s Épée
John Cramerus - 11 place, Y12 Men’s Épée

Top 32:

Logan Shoemaker - 17 place, Y10 Men’s Épée
Bethlehem Witte - 17 place, U19 Women’s Épée
Camille Simmons - 18 place, Y10 Women’s Épée
Kara Collins - 19 place, Div IA Women’s Épée
Sam Freiman - 19 place, Y12 Men’s Épée
Esteban Sanchez - 19 place, Y10 Men’s Épée
Alex Goetting - 24 place, Y12 Men’s Épée
Alex Popovici - 27 place, Vet40 Men’s Foil
Zion Witte - 28 place, U16 Men’s Épée
Jonathan Piskovatskov - 29 place, Y10 Men’s Épée
Nathan Sorensen - 30 place, U19 Men’s Épée
Joseph Blount - 31 place, Y12 Men’s Épée
Mathew Cramerus - 32 place, Y10 Men’s Épée.

Coaches Notes

This was a good successful championships for our club. We came to California with a big solid fencing team. Most of our fencers have achieved their personal goals. Almost every second fencer from our club brought home a medal.

Our junior and senior teams are one of the best in nation. It means that we not only have a talented individual fencers but also have a good club training program that year after year produces fencers who perform exceptionally well as a team at national level competitions.

Our results also show that we have a big gap at Youth - Cadet women's events, where we used to earn medals. This time our club had only one girl who represented us at Y10 event. From the other hand Alliance had one of the biggest representation of Y10, Y12, and Y14 boys fencers in nation who did fairly well in their events. It seems that Alliance has a new strong young generation coming up while we still have a strong junior/adult fencers training with us. We also are increasing the total number of fencers in both Houston and the new Woodlands fencing facilities. Four professional coaches will work at Alliance this year. We believe that all these factors will bring our club to the next competitive level with more fencing, more medals, and more fun.

Pictures credit - Andrey Geva

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