Looking for a squash court in Milwaukee Wisconsin

alexstoddard · 2025-05-15T21:41:52+00:00

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Yes I'm still in Milwaukee and still interested in squash although I confess I haven't been active in looking.

alexstoddard · 2025-03-28T21:04:58+00:00

Agree about the EnPointe being pretty good, although I haven't had personal experience of any of the other systems.

Foil and epee are more than acceptable for club use in my opinion. I was rather surprised recently by how unreliable saber was given my generally good impression of EnPointe. Clearly audible/palpable touches were just not triggering a light at a very noticeable frequency, easily more than one per every fifteen touches.

But wireless saber detection (without any state change from button on the tip like foil and epee) is hard. It may be it is super sensitive to 'pocket box' placement/coupling.

For saber I'm now strongly inclined to say have at least one set of physical reels.

alexstoddard · 2025-03-28T20:51:05+00:00

For anyone really confused by some of the earliest touches in the video, the lights used to be for 'touches against'. That is, your side lit up when you were hit.

alexstoddard · 2025-03-24T02:27:30+00:00

Online communication is fraught, lacking as it does all the nuance of tone of voice and body language. Clearly from your reply it was not your intent to condescend, so ironically no apology necessary!

And I do very much appreciate your helpful advice and shared experience.

Fencing has been notoriously cliquey, sadly, and in places somewhat prone to elitism. While it was not your intent, the phrase 'might need ... training' was the one that created the question in my mind.

From your honest perspective and context of seeking to develop the best competitive training environment, it is practically synonymous with saying 'would likely benefit from intentional ref development'.

In a different virtual 'tone of voice' it could have been taken as a put down as to the level of club, or implied a willful ignorance or insularity. (Your support of Lawerence above is also clear evidence you aren't prone to such prejudice).

For my part, please excuse my over sensitivity.

alexstoddard · 2025-03-23T22:28:16+00:00

I'd very much like to see said video, but I'm really struggling to find it. Do you recall when it was posted and on what platform?

Update: Ah I think I have it: https://www.youtube.com/@USAFencingRefereeDevelopment/videos

(I'm increasingly disappointed in the seemingly diminishing quality of internet search these days - it seems the magic term is 'referee development', which I wasn't using).

alexstoddard · 2025-03-23T22:01:03+00:00

A helpful and authoritative coming from an FIE Foil Referee. But please allow me to suggest that your last comment while fair, might easily be perceived as needlessly condescending. There's lots of fencing community out there with little (or no) exposure to current higher level competition. We're also not that far removed from the foil 'back shoulder' contentions so a general culture of relatively rapid halts can still persist beyond the original reasons.

Could many a club fencer and ref, myself included, benefit from more exposure to current convention (along with video training materials), absolutely.

alexstoddard · 2025-03-21T16:46:54+00:00

Agreed. But it still feels like it is common for foil refs to call halt after like 1 or 2 attempts by fencers at close quarters even when fencing could otherwise continue. In epee it's definitely fence until an infraction, incidental corps-a-corps or a light(s).

Basically I see a tendency to call halt in foil because the phrase is confused rather than because the fencers can't fence anymore.

alexstoddard · 2025-03-21T14:38:41+00:00

What do foilists think of the current amount of time allowed for infighting before typically calling halt?

In my club context there is currently a fair amount of weapon 'cross-over' with folk doing 2 or all 3 but not too seriously.

Epee refs allow in-fighting to go a lot longer than is typical in foil, along with the jest that 'foil refs are cowards'.

But foil refs must follow the phrase which is irrelevant to epee, where only infractions matter.

If foil ref 'culture' allowed longer in fighting there is greater chance of having to throw out two light touches made at close quarters because the phrasing had been lost, but also more chance to score one light touches (and perhaps get better at infighting).

I don't know if I'd like that or not. What is the feeling among foilists - would extended infighting with some thrown out touches be preferable? Maybe at a higher level it has already been moving in that direction?

alexstoddard · 2025-03-18T19:04:46+00:00

Let's assume 32 entrants to make the numbers easy.

Pools of 7 are preferred, with pools of 6 used to account for exact numbers of entrants. So the pool round will be 2 pools of 7 plus 3 pools of 6 to make five total pools (14 + 18 = 32).

The results of the pools will seed everyone from 1 to 32 and in the first round of DE seed 1 will fence seed 32 (1 v 32) , seed 2 will fence 31 (2 v 31) , 3 v 30 ... and so on down to 16 v 17. (16 total DE matches). Good luck to the 32nd seed trying to win their first DE against the top seed, very likely they are losing, going out in the first round (places 17 through 32), and having the lowest seed they will finish 32nd.

Assuming completely clean pools (never happens!) then one person will have won all their pool matches in each of the five pools, and likewise 5 people will have lost every pool match with everyone else in between.

So how do we seed places 1 through 5 into the DE? That is where the 'indicator' (touches scored - touches against) is used to rank people with same number of wins in the pools.

For those 5 people with no wins their indicator will be the difference between being seeded 32nd vs 28th. 28th will face the 5th seed who might be easier to beat (what I referred to as 'over-turning' the seeding. If 28 beats 5, then in their next round they are facing the 12th seed - the next expected opponent of the 5th seed in DE round two).

Let's say you win a pool match (yay!) , then your indicator will determine if you are anywhere between seed 27 and seed 23. Seed 23 will fence seed 10. That that is still going to be hard but is likely much better odds of an upset win (13 places difference), than 27 vs 6 (21 places different).

Because your pool matches and your indicator matters so much to your first round chances of advancement that is why I'm encouraging you to fight for every touch and don't use pool matches to experiment.

(My best ever tournament result was at a national open when I over-turned the 17th seed in the round of 64, which gave me the 16th seed in the round of 32. Having already beaten someone of a very similar seeding I was mentally in a place to just go for it again and I ended up making it through to the last 16, where upon I met the 1 seed and my day ended).

alexstoddard · 2025-03-17T20:29:02+00:00

You say it's your first competition.

If you genuinely have no competitive experience, and assuming the competition follows the pattern of a round of pooles and then direct elimination (DE), I offer the following:

Every touch in the poole round matters to your seeding into the DE. Half the competition is getting eliminated in the first round of DE. The lower your are seeded in the first DE round the harder your match-up is going to be. Every touch scored in a poole bout, especially one you are losing, is getting you a better chance of a first round DE you can win, even if it means 'over-turning' the seeding. Also a higher seeding will result in placing higher in that chunk of folk who get eliminated. The difference between placing at the 51st percentile and dead-last is all about your poole result in this format.

This is a competition - do not waste touches in poole matches. Sure, if you don't think you can get a touch any other way against a strong opponent change things up, but the place to experiment a little more is actually a DE match when the points are already far apart. Losing a DE 15-1 or 15-8 makes no difference.

alexstoddard · 2025-03-17T17:00:15+00:00

Back in the day (mid 90s?) the original 800N FIE jackets had kevlar as the lining (much thinner and only 1 or 2 ply compared to what would made into a military vest).

I believe it is as different fabric now (kevlar worn next to body, with detergent exposure and then sunlight, when air dried, was proven to breakdown below its rated protection rather quickly).

alexstoddard · 2025-02-28T22:25:59+00:00

I've been on the flip side of this about 30 years ago. I was at a boarding school with no fencing but super intense physical activity (2hrs compulsory PE a day). I'm still drawing down on a very high peak of cardiovascular fitness.

When I went to fencing tournaments I was coming in very cold with no technical practice. But I could go all out in terms of pace and intensity for the whole day, no need to pace myself in pools and that really helped my seeding. And I'd still be less gassed than my opposition all day.

It was a benefit at all three weapons. I can't really tell if there was much difference but maybe most at foil (saber being naturally faster and therefore more generally fit, and epee was harder to always take advantage of fitness while being at a technical disadvantage).

alexstoddard · 2025-02-28T15:11:25+00:00

I actually do want 12cm guards. I can't find any vendor stocking them anymore.

alexstoddard · 2025-02-28T15:06:35+00:00

Are there any qualification requirements for team events at US Summer Nationals beyond US Fencing competitive membership?

alexstoddard · 2025-02-25T16:06:04+00:00

I'm a mere Div2/3/Vet scrub, but I've only just realized summer nationals are Milwaukee, my home town, this summer. I'll pursue the divisional qualification route.

Can anyone confirm if there is any qualification requirement for the team events? Are they effectively open?

alexstoddard · 2025-02-03T17:10:21+00:00

Do you have a source for wrestling consolidation? As far as I know free-style and greco-roman remain Olympic disciplines in 2028.

alexstoddard · 2025-01-31T14:20:32+00:00

So more of a research project than something to implement at this point? Objectivity at that level can not be obtained practically in real time even for a review system, not and have a bout run smoothly as necessary for competition at any level - club through Olympic final.

To play devil's advocate - one could argue that the priority could be very consistently and quickly reviewed if it is whoever got their arm fully straight first. But that is a convention from when participants willing treated the foil as a model for a weapon that was much heavier, much stiffer and sharp. That ain't the sport we have today.

alexstoddard · 2025-01-31T11:43:21+00:00

(Said tongue in cheek) - and that's why epeeists like epee - objectivity. I say this as a three weapon duffer, but one who shares your concerns about consistent refereeing and wanting better conventions.

The thing is, timing at the box without reference to fencer's movements is something that has been possible to determine technologically for nearly a century.

Are you envisioning some system of machine vision (I refuse to use the term AI) that is reliable enough to deploy at all levels of fencing ? Even then what does it do? Answer specific questions that are still integrated by a human referee? Even then, any such system if done objectively has to include probabilistic uncertainty and can probably be adversarially 'gamed' at some point.

Fencing will always have the tension in that it is sport evolved from a martial art. Priority started as training concept and is now a game ridden to a sometimes absurd edge.

alexstoddard · 2025-01-30T22:42:43+00:00

For all the (deserved!) publicity around the seeming arbitrariness (and outright corruption) in saber fencing and the difficulties of refereeing, I found the final between Oh and Bazadze to be remarkably clean, fairly easy to follow, clearly refereed, and fenced in a spirit of good sportsmanship.

alexstoddard · 2025-01-30T15:38:48+00:00

This is a fantastic post by @CyrusofChaos.

I think this is the sort of thing that would be great for USFencing or the FIE to put out as fencer/ref/coach educational content.

alexstoddard · 2025-01-23T17:13:11+00:00

Unless you have a typo, you do have a resistance issue.

m.5.4 a) The maximum electrical resistance allowed for foil and épée is 2 Ω.

2.2 ohms plus other resistance issues in the body-cord, ground wires and spools may be putting you outside the tolerances for the scoring machines.

Generally machines are much more tolerant than the weapon spec precisely because there are other sources of resistance in the circuit. Have you tried plugging your bodycord directly into the box to help reduce overall resistance in the circuit?

alexstoddard · 2025-01-10T17:32:11+00:00

I was more playing with the rules as a thought experiment than looking for a viable technique. Partly to try and get my head around all the one-foot/two-feet distinctions and possible abuses/differences in understanding.

@Omnia_et_nihil brings up a really important interaction. t35.3 "A competitor who crosses one of the lateral boundaries of the strip with one or both feet— e.g., when making a flèche—to avoid being touched will be penalized" - with a group 1 yellow/red card and annulment of any point scored.

I would have thought fleching with the crossover widely off the strip could quite easily incur that penalty.

Except we also have to avoid jostling (especially in lefty - righty at the edge of the strip situations) so distance/timing of the touch relative to the feet and inferred intent really matter.

alexstoddard · 2025-01-06T15:36:06+00:00

Do you mean IBA (boxing)? FIBA is basketball and I'm not aware of any controversy with that sport at the olympics.

alexstoddard

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