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HEMAtac's 2018 in retrospect

Hungary: Progress with Refereeing and Closing a Successful Year in Coaching


HEMAtac's past year has been busy with every aspect of fencing in Budapest. It was only this February that we started our cooperation with the Hungarian HEMA club Kard Rendje whose workshops are frequented by fencers from several towns and even members of other clubs. The weekly, tactics-focused workshops are supervised by HEMAtac founder Krisztina Nagy, and follow the guidelines set up together with the club's instructors, András Berki, and Balázs Kirschweng.

Beginners are now involved in our regular sessions, which reportedly accelerates their development compared to the previous years' experiences. You could follow the progress of this work via the training logs during the year, we can say that the foundations have been established, and we are looking forward to next year's tasks. So let's see the facts!

 

Kard Rendje decided to integrate refereeing training in everyday club life. Small in-house competitions became a regular part of the workshops, which benefited fencing and refereeing students alike. Everyone who participated in the training learned a bit of bout analysis in practice, but some took it further: not even a year after we started working on bout management principles (according to the Polish and Slovak conventions), and priority rules, we introduced three new Hungarian HEMA referees to the international public at the 4th Tyrnhaw Tournament. Head instructor András Berki, Tamás Halmai, and Péter Buzás are the first referees HEMAtac has been training, and recommends as internationally capable workforce for tournaments.

 

On the fencing front, a hardworking competitive team is forming with members from two cities and two different clubs. Györgyi Czifra, Adrienn Rambács, András Berki, Balazs Kirschweng, Bence Gombás, and Máté Kálmán Nagy (of Ars Ensis) have been participating in our training program since the beginning. Beside the Hungarian tournaments, they have also competed in various European events, including Pardubice, Graz, Žilina, Utrecht, Bratislava, Trnava, and Belgrade. Our focus was mostly on the foundations, which shows in the steady progress in the rankings. By becoming gradually more conscious in their preparation game, our fencers' success rates generally improved, especially in pool bouts.


We were not without medals either, Györgyi Czifra was victorious in both Graz and Trnava. Györgyi is an experienced longsword fencer who has already achieved good results for years, taking medals at home and abroad, and having competed in both women's and open leagues. Last year she has worked on fine-tuning her footwork, and using it to implement various new preparations and tactical concepts in her fencing. Thanks to her disciplined approach to fencing, this became advantageous, changing the face of the game to our benefit in some key bouts.

Congratulations once more, and we are grateful for the dedication she has shown to the art and science of fencing.

In the background the pile of training plans, video discussions, and exercise analyses is growing as well, promising another ambitious season. Thank you for your interest and attention to our work, we plan to live up to it and keep delivering news of our progress and discoveries.

 

Poland: HEMAtac and Swordfish


The waning year 2018 was also busy for HEMAtac’s Polish chapter. Coach Łukasz Majewski agreed to supervise the Polish team of competitors heading for the famous Swordfish: Joanna Koprowska and Antoni Olbrychski (both Akademia Szermierzy), Aleksander Frydrych (independent), as well as Aleksander Dynarek and Konrad Kramarz (both Mordschlag Łódź). He ran several weekend seminars in order to help the fencers prepare physically and, even more so, tactically for the upcoming competition. The meetings involved intensive analysis of the ruleset and fighting styles of the expected difficult opponents, which then served as a foundation for forging training plans for individual lessons and independent work by particular fencers. In addition to that, Coach Majewski and his assistants – Rafał Kalus of Akademia Szermierzy and Maciej Talaga of ARMA-PL and HEMAtac – performed numerous individual lessons with some of the fencers helping them internalise the tactical instruction and adjust their technique to better cope with the idiosyncrasies of the Nordic judging system which differs significantly from what is common in Poland.


Rafał Kalus did lessons with the following fencers and weapons: Joanna Koprowska and Antoni Olbrychski, as the main coach in the longsword and sabre (focus: offensive preparation, attacks and counter-attacks with opposition, and prolonged exchanges with emphasis on open-eyes parries and ripostes); Aleksander Dynarek, as a visiting coach in the rapier & dagger (focus: preparation of attacks and counter-attacks with opposition, and disengaging opponent’s parrying dagger); and Konrad Kramarz, as a visiting coach in the longsword (focus: preparation of thrusting attacks and counter-attacks with opposition, and parrying feinted attacks with open-eyes ripostes).


Maciej Talaga did regular lessons as an assisting coach in the longsword with: Joanna Koprowska (focus: preparation of feinted attacks, parrying ripostes, counter-attacks with opposition, thrusting from the bind, and power generation in corps-a-corps) and Antoni Olbrychski (focus: thrusting attacks and counter-attacks with opposition, second-intention attacks to deep targets, continuity of action, and power generation in corps-a-corps).

The work in the salle was supplemented with online analyses of recorded fights from previous editions of Swordfish and Dutch Lions Cup.


It has to be noted that Aleksander Frydrych, a veteran fencer and instructor, prepared mostly individually in his hometown of Poznań, under the guidance of Olympic fencing coach Jerzy Kosiński of AZS UAM.

Mordschlag Łódź team worked intensively on weekly basis with retired sports fencing coach Krzysztof Broda who focused mostly on polishing epee and sabre technical basics and applying some of his ideas to hema (training attacks in tempo with dodges using padded sabres and epee with dagger).


And we have to say the results were pretty satisfactory – the Polish team in Sweden brought home a nice bag of medals from the majority of tournaments they participated in.

  • In the Longsword OPEN: Antoni Olbrychski took silver after a close match against Sergey Kultaev of St. Petersburg Freifechtersgilde;

  • in Women’s Longsword: Joanna Koprowska dominated her pool and dropped out in the elims against the would-be bronze medallist, Michela D’Orlando;

  • In the Sabre: Konrad Kramarz took silver after a very tight (and a bit controversially judged) fight against Dmitry Gibadullin of UKRF, whereas Antoni Olbrychski decisively defeated Kristofer Stanson of Stockholms Stigmän in a bronze medal match; Aleksander Frydrych placed on top of the pool classification only to be eliminated by the future finalist – Konrad Kramarz.

  • In the Rapier&Dagger: Aleksander Dynarek took bronze flawlessy from Maestro Francesco Lodà of Accademia Romana d'Armi; Aleksander Frydrych, for whom rapier is far from a weapon of choice, did well in the pools and got eliminated in 1/8 by Dmitry Gibadullin of UKRF.

The preparations took about six months of intensive work by all fencers. On behalf of the coaches, we would like to congratulate and give our thanks to the competitors for their dedication, discipline, and trust they showed towards us and our approach to fencing.

 

HEMAtac and the Polish HEMA League


The fencers preparing for Swordfish, obviously, polished their fighting spirit in numerous Polish (and not only) national competitions and scored high.


Joanna Koprowska – won almost every Women’s competition she entered (except the Open Austrian Championships, where she lost in the final against another HEMAtac co-operator, Györgyi Czifra of Kard Rendje, and the Polish National Championships, where she lost to a very talented first-timer, Joanna Puchalska of ARMA-PL Kraków KDF). This firmly secured her the top position in Polish HEMA ranking for women (all weapons except the rapier) and the 11th rank in the mixed sabre;


Antoni Olbrychski – finally managed to break his ‘silver medal curse’ in the longsword and defeated two of his great adversaries, Maciej Kwiek and Jakub Wrzalik of ARMA-PL. By doing so, he got golds from Durschlag (longsword), Black Horns Cup (sabre, messer & buckler), Falcons Cup (messer & buckler), W3 (longsword), and Polish National Championships (longsword, messer & buckler), as well as other medals (including silver in the sabre at the Austrian Championships). This way he became ranked no. 1 in Polish HEMA ranking in the longsword, sabre, and messer & buckler;


Aleksander Frydrych – fought well in the sabre and rapier, taking golds at Nordfecht (sabre) and Black Horns Cup (sabre, rapier) and keeping a firm foothold in the top 10 in Polish HEMA ranking in both weapons (#4 sabre, #6 rapier);


Aleksander Dynarek – made an astonishing progress in both longsword and rapier, hence FEDER (Polish HEMA federation) distinguished him with an award for ‘Best Progress of the Year’. He won two silvers (rapier and longsword) at Durschlag, and regularly fought in the finals at other events, most notably Falcons Cup (silver rapier), thus ranking 4th in the longsword and 3rd in the rapier;


Konrad Kramarz – ultimately switched from the padded weapons division (Go-Now) to steel competitions and also progressed steadily in the longsword and the sabre. Despite being harassed by health issues throughout the season, he took silvers at Durschlag and Falcons Cup (sabre), as well as Black Horns Cup (longsword and messer & buckler). This ranked him in top 10 in three weapons (#2 sabre, #10 longsword, #9 messer & buckler).


Besides the Swordfish team, the junior HEMAtac Polish representative, Maciej Talaga, worked at his home club, ARMA-PL Warsaw, assisting progress of talented longsword fighters – most notably Jakub Wrzalik, already a veteran and multiple medallist, and Krzysztof Markowski, a teenager freshly introduced into steel competitions. Jakub Wrzalik, due to his duties as a father, competed only twice, but successfully, taking silver at the Polish National Championships and ranking 13th in the longsword. Krzysztof Markowski, on the other hand, still has to wait for his first medal, but competed a lot, always storming his way through the pools and ultimately entering the top 10 in Polish HEMA ranking (#9 longsword).

All in all, this was an extremely busy year for us and our fencers, but we enjoyed every minute of it and await the incoming season with high spirits :)

 

We wish our fencers, students, colleagues, and followers a successful new year!


- the HEMAtac team



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