Rapier Academy & Practice Report

EK Rapier Academy

This past weekend was the culmination of an event I have wanted to do for about 5 or 6 years.  The problem has always been in finding a suitable site that was affordable for such a specialized event in my area.  Well I finally inquired at Jennie's church on the cost and available dates.  With K&Q Rapier having been moved from the winter to fall, I felt winter was a good time.  The only available date the church had didn't conflict with any local events, though we would lose some people to Gulf Wars and Black Rose Ball (RP).  So I put in a bid with Settmour Swamp, who were very supportive.

As an autocrat, this was the easiest event I have run.  My biggest difficulty was getting people to commit to teaching at the event.  Without classes, it would just be a big rapier practice.  The things that made it easy on me were:  no court, I'd know almost all of the attendees, limited focus, and a much smaller pool of attendees.  I figured a break even of 50, which when compared to Mudthaws I've run, is less than 10%.  I was hoping to break even on the event, but knew the Barony would still support it in the future, even with a small loss.  My budget was under 10% of what my Mudthaw budgets were.

The important thing when running a schola like this is to approach people directly, asking them to teach a class.  A point was made afterwards though, that we should not be asking the teachers what they want to teach, but also asking the students what they want to learn.  Things to note for future years.

The event drew 65 paid attendees.  We were helped out by the weather gods and had a beautiful day in the middle of March. This allowed people to fence outside.  If the weather was not on our side, it would have been a little tight inside.  In  the future, if we use the same site, I will ask for the classrooms on the for use as classrooms and changing rooms and forego the rooms off the gym, except for one-on-one training.

Thanks to the positive reception, I will be looking to run this event next year.  Some of the classes people want to see for next year are:

• How to recruit new fencers
• Remaining period with your armor and weapons
• Spanish rapier
• German rapier
• more beginner classes
• Intermediate Italian rapier
• Case of Rapiers
• Long Sword in SCA Rapier
• Rapier 101
• Marshaling classes

If you have any interest in teaching one of the above, please let me know.  If you know someone who would be a good teacher for any of the above, please let me know who that is, and I would be happy to reach out to them.

So thank you to everyone who came out and helped in some way.

Practice Report - 3/15/16

As for practice this week.  I actually felt better about my fencing this week.  I'm still a little sloppy and need to tighten it up, but I also need to be put into the pressure of a tournament and not just fencing at practice.  This week, I warmed up with Bethany,fighting here rapier and dagger.  I fought stick against Mike (where I was trying to get the open end of my stick over his blade.  He let me get it on our last pass, after which I was laughing too hard inside to continue).  I also had some great passes with Orlando, going single.  Overall, not a bad week.

I'm going to miss most of the fencing at Mudthaw, as we are flying back from a family vacation that morning, but I do plan to be at the event.