AFM Summer Nationals Prep Camp: A Student's Perspective (Day 1)

 Today was the first day of the AFM Summer Nationals Prep Camp. It was certainly an eventful day, to say the least. I'll be taking you through my camp experience for the next 5 days. I'll also give a rating for each day and, on Friday, the camp as a whole. My rating will be out of 10, and the things I will be judged are aspects that are crucial for a camp's success. Those aspects are student engagement, coach excitement, diversity of exercises, the usefulness of exercises, and fun. 

We started by introducing the incredible guests who will be training with us. Firstly, Simone Mencarelli, whose accomplishments are as follows, 2024 Champion of the Italian National Championship (Senior), Gold in U20 World Cup in Riga, Silver in U20 World Cup in Heraklion, Bronze in U20 World Cup in Udine, Gold in U20 World Cup in Basel, Silver in U20 European Team Championship in Tallinn, Italian Champion 2023, and Italian U23 Champion 2024. He was definitely someone I was extremely excited to fence today, and I can state firsthand how incredible he really is. 

Next up was Gaia Caforio, whose accomplishments are just as crazy as Simone's: Individual Silver in U20 World Cup in Udine, Italy (01/5/2020), Individual Bronze in U20 World Cup in Laupheim, Germany (12/5/2022), Individual Silver in U17 World Championships in Torun, Poland (04/13/2019), Individual Bronze in U17 European Championships in Porec, Croatia, (02/23/2020), Individual Bronze in U20 World Cup in Udine, Italy, (01/9/2022), Italian Champion in U20 Individual Championship in Padua, Italy, (05/26/2023), Italian Champion in Absolute Team Championship in La Spezia, Italy, (06/10/2023). While I was not able to fencer her today, I am definitely thrilled to be able to fence her throughout this week.

Our final guest today was Fabrizio Citro, whose vast accolades are extremely impressive. He is the individual European Champion U23  - Toruń 2013, European Champion U23 for teams - Toruń 2013, European Champion U23 for teams - Tbilisi 2014, Italian Cup Champion for clubs,  Silver Medal Italian Championship U23, Two-time Silver Medalist in Italian Teams Championship, Bronze Medal Italian Senior Championship, Bronze Medal Italian U23 Championship and Bronze Medal Italian Junior Championship. Once again, failed to get an opportunity to fence this superb fencer, but I will jump at any I get in the next few days. 

After all the introductions, we started with some light jogging around the facility. I took a chance to look around, it was a sureal sight. More than 60 fencers from as young as 8 to as old as 18 (not counting the adult Italian guests); this had to be way more fencers than last year's. It was crazy. However, there were a little too many fencers here. It became more of an issue than an extraordinary sight the longer the camp went on. There weren't enough strips for us all to do drills, so some of us had to be packed together, which made things quite uncomfortable. However, that was only a tiny discomfort as the rest of the camp was great. After running, we did a little stretching with the illustrious Sergey Bida. I will say that his stretching routine is very tiring on the body, but it definitely woke us up. We then did some footwork drills, where we learned how to set up an action, first with a fake, to catch the opponent off guard and draw their reaction. Then, follow up the fake with a counter-attack, which, should our opponent fall for the fake and attempt to attack, would, as the name says, counter their attack with an attack of our own. We worked on different variations of this technique before suiting up (meaning putting on our fencing equipment).

After suiting up, we fenced about 10 bouts to 5 touches. I personally fenced a couple of my friends and some smaller kids who asked to fence me. Most of these kids I had reffed before in previous AFM Youth Cups, so it was cool to go from watching them fence as a referee to actually fencing them. I also fenced Simone Mencarelli, who I beat 5-4. I definitely learned today that there is a reason pros are pros. His speed and accuracy on some of his touches seemed inhuman at times, so it was definitely an experience to fence him. After that, we took a lunch break, and I went to Five Guys with our Italian guests and some friends. It was their first time having Five Guys, and they said that it was pretty good, giving the chain an 8/10. We reconvened and fenced for the final portion of class. 

Overall, today's class was instead on the lighter side when it came to actual work, as it was the first day. Even so, I would give today's class a solid 8/10 from a fencing standpoint (funny how this is the second time that rating has been given today). Today's post was a little longer due to our amazing guests' interminable list of accolades. The next ones will be more concise and more accessible to digest, as there will be a post for each day I am at camp. As always, thank you for taking the time to read, and be on the lookout for another post tomorrow :)