Asda Athletes

This Summer has been a busy time for me as an athlete! I was fortunate enough to attend the Fencing National Academy training course in Nottingham. The camp was a week long and enabled me to improve my S and C as well as train under the supervision of the national coaches. Therefore, this camp was brilliant for preparing me for the season and was paid for by my Sports Aid/ASDA grant! Thank you for the opportunity to kick start my training again before the season begins!
Around this time I also took the opportunity to visit almost all the Junior schools in my area, giving assemblies about fencing and how they could get involved. The assemblies were particularly Olympic themed and I encouraged the pupils to have a go themselves, getting two of them to fight each other in the assembly! I also focused on how if they believe and work hard they can achieve. These assemblies, in which my brother and I also fenced, seemed to have gone down very well among the pupils, and I hope to see some coming in to sports from them!

This Sunday was when the season really started for me, when I attended the Bristol Open competition. This was an adult competition, but also an under 20 qualifying event for GB. There were 119 competitors and, having won four of my six poule fights, I was went in to my DE’s ranked 34th. After battling through my DE fights I ended up 30th, giving me a ranking as an under 20 of 13th; this was a particularly good result as I have only just turned 17 and so still have a few years to move up the ranking!

I look forward to the rest of the season!!!

I was fortunate enough to be able to go to the olympic foil fencing this summer, seeing the GB team in action at the highest level. This was a great opportunity to watch some great fencing, and despite all GB competitors going out first round, to cheer on our country and fencers. Hopefully the olympics has given the sport some good publicity as well, with more people hearing about fencing and its accessability. After the fencing I was also lucky enough to bump in to Lawrence Halsted, a GB foil fencer (in picture) and had previously trained with; Lawrence is a role model within the sport and for foilists, fencing at an olympic standard and having such a great character. The atmosphere at the Excel arena was amazing, it was great to experience London 2012!

Deamer picked for GBR Squad

Following an extremely successful domestic season, which included Hazelwick student Luke Deamer, winning the Under 17 British National fencing championships & also being the highest ranked Brit in the International Manchester Cadet fencing Championships; Luke received the selection call to fence for Britain internationally. The first outing was a trip to Halle in Germany with a 12 man GBR Under 17 Foil Squad. The aim now was to gain experience by fencing with the best in Europe. There were 180 participants from 18 countries, as well as the visiting American National Team. As a first outing Luke fought hard & finished an impressive 62nd. This earned him valuable ranking points. Next stop was a visit to Bratislava in Slovakia. Another challenging field of Europeans, fencing from 8am – 6pm brought a result of 77th.

On the back of this success Luke then received the much coveted selection call to be part of the four man GBR Under 17 Foil Team for the European Championships in Porec, Croatia. After a nervous start, Luke progressed well through the preliminary rounds winning 3 poule fights & narrowly missing out on a fourth, having to fence some very highly ranked fencers from France, Poland & Hungary. Holding his nerve & adapting his style Luke won his first Direct Elimination fight beating a Danish opponent. The next fight was against a Latvian fencer ranked 20 places above him. Luke initially took the lead & had command of the fight. The Latvian however changed tactics & with a huge effort drew the fight back level at 12 all. Luke tried all the moves he had available & despite his good blade control, the Latvian’s fast footwork proved to be the better on the day. The fight ended 13/15 with Luke losing, but feeling he was worthy of his place in the squad & able to hold his own against strong European fencers. Luke’s final ranking was 47th, with the fellow Brits finishing 30th, 58th & 68th.
The second day in Porec was a team competition with 18 Countries pitched against each other. The British Squad were ranked 13th before the start, but pulled together well as a team. They beat off opposition from Serbia & a very strong Danish side. Luke was able to score a considerable amount of hits on the Danes, from what he had learnt the day before in the individual competition. The Polish nation produce very quick & able fencers & this proved to be where the British team found their toughest challenge. Despite losing 40/45 they all learnt a huge amount. The final British ranking was 9th/18, much improved on the rankings prediction & each member was hugely proud of their achievements.

Luke has received sponsorship from Asda & Sports Aid this season, which has made the European travel possible. The plan is for Luke & members of Crawley Sword Club to show off their skills at Asda in Crawley over this Olympic Summer, so watch out for this coming soon.

Recently I was lucky enough to receive my cheque from ASDA Crawley! As unfortunately I was unable to go to the funding event held in Wembley, instead I was asked to go to my local ASDA store. Here I was kindly given a tour around the store, including behind the scenes offices and staff areas, by the stores ‘community life champion’ Simeon. This tour included the ‘action alley’ of the store, along with possible areas to do future fund raising. This should be particularly good for hopefully future fencing demos, aiming to raise money also for my fencing club.

The staff at ASDA Crawley seemed very friendly and (I hope) interested in potential fencing fundraising activities. I wish we can get some of them fencing at a fundraising event!

I also got to speak to the store manager about how I can develop my sporting achievements, which I hope to progress on.

THANK YOU ASDA, I look forward to working with you!

Recently I was fortunate enough to be able to visit the Olympic park and watch some track events at the Olympic stadium! Through helping out with gold challenge, a charity which encourages people to try different Olympic sports, I was invited to watch a number of charity races at the stadium. This was a brilliant opportunity before the Olympic games in the summer to see the Olympic park (although not finished yet), and see where such a major part of this countries sport will take place. Whilst fencing unfortunately doesn’t happen in the Olympic park (at the EXEL centre instead,) this trip was very inspiring; it really made me think that one day I would like to be taking part in the Olympics and be part of such a great spectacle! Although I will have to settle for watching the London Olympics on the television for now, I hope that one day I will be there competing there myself.