The SCA tournament I ran last weekend...

Last Saturday I ran a tournament at an SCA event. But this wasn't any old rock-'em, sock-'em tourney, this had an extra element to it.

At the annual "Feast of John Barleycorn" event held by the Canton of Northpass in the Crown Province of Ostgardr, His Etceteracy Viscount...(etc, etc, etc)...Sir Edward Zifran of Gendy would run his "unbelt challenge." This was a tournament in which in addition to the fighting, there would be a written exam in the knowledge needed by any unbelted fighter if they should ever wish to become a knight. This included knowledge of such things as heraldry, forms of address, chess, medieval song and poetry, dance, and history. Comportment, courtesy, chivalry, and honor were also traits expressly to be displayed at this tournament.

Sir Edward was not available to run the tourney this year, so I stepped up and took it over. Though my daily work life prevented me from printing out the usual exams, I was determined to make this tourney still serve the purpose of enabling the fighters in attendance to display their knightly traits.

Though the event was more lightly attended than it had been in previous years. There were four fighters, Lord Ronan, Shandor, Decklin (sp?), and Gavin, a new fighter who had just authorized that day.

Before the tourney began I recruited the highest-ranking nobility present, Countess Brekke Franksdottir, and the King and Queen of Acre (a separate group from the SCA, but which is treated as a kingdom in the SCA as a courtesy), to sit as judges and watch the tournament, along with whoever was attending the event who was not otherwise engaged in an activity (as there were several concurrent activities that day).

First I had each fighter present themselves to the nobility, that their graces and excellency would know whom they were watching. Then I hit them with the first part of the competitions: the exam.

I asked them questions bout the heraldic tinctures. I pointed at various articles of my clothing and asked what the heraldic name for the color was. One challenging moment came when one fighter said my hat was azure and another that it was purpure. I had to pull out another had that I had that was more clearly a blue color and had light blue trim to get agreement on that. It also illustrated that azure was azure was azure, no mater the brightness, shade, or tint.

I closed that round of questioning by pointing at my brown pants. This was a trick question as there is no heraldic for "brown," but it is a default color for certain items of nature, like bears and tree trunks, when blazoned as "proper."

I then informed the fighters that it was time to don their helmets and prepare to fight, At this time, however, I got a phone call. A friend of mine, who was to meet me at the event, was calling to inform me that he had arrived. I told him to ask his way to the troll, and that I would keep an eye open, and join him when he got there (I could see the "troll table" from the tourney field).

That taken care of (so I thought), I returned to the list field, where two fighters were ready to fight. I had them go at it. Then the other two fighters fought, then I had them switch partners and fight again. After that I gave them a rest and lined them up before their graces and excellency for more questions.

This time I asked the forms of address. I made sure to ask four questions, so that each could have a chance to offer an answer. When two of them raised their hand at the same time for an answer, I picked the one who had not answered yet. There was some clarification needed on the last question, the form of address of a prince or princess of a principality. I thought there might be some sort of modifier before the term "highness," but the authorities present assured me that there was not.

So we fought the next round. There were still two matchups of fighters that had not yet been made, so I let those pairs fight each other. In between rounds, I was glancing over to the troll table, and did not see my friend yet present. His text messages were talking about things that made me wonder if he was actually at the correct location.

The next round of questions I made about chess. I asked how a knight moved, what "castling" was, and finally pulled out the trick question for the round: when does a pawn become a king? One fighter said it was when they made it to the other side of the board. Another fighter (Gavin) corrected him, saying that the pawn would be made a queen, not a king. The Authorities clarified that the pawn could be made anything but a king when they reached the other side of the board.

In the course of this round, of fighting, Gavin's leg armor strap had broken, so he needed time to get it repaired. By this time also I really thought that my friend would have made it to the troll table, but I did not see him there, so I needed some way to stall, but also needed to keep the fighter and attendees "in the game," as it were. So I asked their graces and excellency if they would like to engage in casual conversation so as to better get to know the fighters. They agreed, and so I invited the fighters to attend and engage the nobles in conversation.

I ran to the troll table to ask if my friend had arrived, and they confirmed that he had not. A trot up the road did not bring him into sight. Then a text came through stating that he saw some mutual friends that I would not have expected to be at this event.

You see, part of the point of him driving to this event was that the following day we would go to a renaissance festival in Sparta, NJ to help the NYC Armored combat team in their exhibition of full contact medieval armored combat with steel weapons. It turns out that he got the directions mixed up and had gone to Sparta, thinking that that was where this SCA event was happening. Once I realized that, I excused myself from the conversation with him, because what I was to do now regarding getting to that event would require more time than I had at the moment to figure out, as I was still running this tournament!

At that moment, a fellow who knew me was at my side, and I asked him to run to the tourney field like the messenger at Marathon and inform the folks there that the fighting part of this round would begin soon. When he collapsed after his run and delivery of the message, he was reminded that he was supposed to die right there if he wanted to truly reenact that famous dash.

Before the break, one of the fighters had started to suggest that we do a melee. I had cut him off because not only did I need the time to take care of the messages coming from my friend, but I wanted to announce the beginning of melees in dramatic fashion. So when I returned, and asked the fighter (Lord Ronan) to repeat his request. So he requested that, since one of the fighters had just authorized that day, and he had not yet tasted the sensation of melee, that we engage in such combat now. So I turned to the audience and, in my best Michael Buffer/Dwayne Johnson-inspired delivery, hollered "Are you ready for a meLEEEEEEEEEEEELALALALAAAAAAAAA! The audience replied in the affirmative.

So the fighters divided themselves up into teams of two, fought two rounds, then mixed up the teams, fought two more rounds, then mixed the teams a third time to finish off. I identified the teams as "This" and "That" in the first set, "Tastes Great" and "Less Filling" for the second, and, because in the third set they deliberately put both of the polearmers on one team and both of the shieldmen on the other, "Long" and "Short."

When all this was done, I had the fighters thank their Graces and Excellency one by one, and then held a brief discussion with the Authorities to determine the winners.

We decided that Ronan had shown the most prowess in the fighting, and that Gavin had performed the best in answering the questions. In addition, Decklin had proven to be best prepared, with extra weapons and assistance for fighters with broken equipment and other needs, and Shandor was judged to be the most skilled in his use of polearm.

So I had about an hour and a half before court was to begin to find some sort of prizes for the winners (all of them). I found a small goblet, a charming little medallion, a nifty lion-headed cloak clasp, and a small ceramic vial from the event's merchants and craftspeople. I did not want to impose a value judgment or particular appropriateness to any of the prizes, so when court came I allowed the winners to select those which they wanted. I first called forth the winners of the fighting and the questions, and Ronan jumped at the cup, while Gavin selected the medallion. Thus I declared Ronan the winner of the "cup of combat" (upon reflection, I should have said the "Goblet of Glory") and Gavin the winner of the "Medallion of Knowledge." Decklin selected the cloak clasp for his achievement, and to Shandor, who missed court, I presented the ceramic vial later, and he seemed quite pleased with it.

Between selecting the prizes and awarding them in court, I got in touch with my friend, and he said he would come from Sparta back to the event, and he wound up arriving just in time for the feast.

After such a full and long day, I enjoyed some socializing and song-singing around the fire after the feast, then went to bed and slept for nine well-needed hours. The next day my friend and I went to that Renaissance Festival in Sparta, N.J and helped out the NYC Armored Combat team in their exhibition. I will be going back there this Sunday.

I came away from the day with a few things learned or reinforced:

When running an activity, find a way to have moments of action and moments of stillness to minimize the effects of exhaustion.

If you don't know the answer, finding it in a public forum can benefit more people than just you.

When giving directions for two events in two days, be multiply redundant about which event is on which day.

People at a place for the first time don't know what's going on as well as you do, if you have been going to the same event for nearly 30 years.

Return to SCA Combat...With One Hand!

While I cannot say I have truly "returned" to SCA combat because, as the armored combat marshal of the Crown Province of Ostgardr (Greater NYC area), I run a fighter practice and oversee most local tournaments and demo fighting. But I did put on my armor and fight in one battle at Pennsic, and I did spar at the Brooklyn fighter practice last week.

First,  just a little background: About two years ago I hurt my arm throwing a football. The pain went away soon, and I didn't think much of it. I did not fight much after that because there were not many opportunities to fight (the fighter practice, having no indoor site that year, was closed for the winter). Even in the spring, with fighter practice and an event or two, I must not have gotten enough hard fighting in to notice the true nature of my arm, injury.

Then I went to the East Kingdom 50-year anniversary event.

I got as much fighting in as I could. I had not been working out much, so I was in pretty poor physical shape compared to some recent years, but I fought my heart out anyway. At the end of each day, though. I simply could not raise my right arm (my sword arm). I had to literally pick it up with my left arm to enable it to do anything (have you ever tried brushing your teeth with two hands?).

I had started training for the TV show "Knight Fight," to which I had been invited to participate, and wanted to push myself. My body, and my arm, paid the price. When I went to the doctor after getting back to the city, it was determined that I had a torn rotator cuff.

I didn't let this stop me from training. After a few days my arm would recover, and I would be swinging a sword again. I even went to Sword Class NYC where the Armored Combat League's NY Sentinels trained and got in some of the full-contact action that I expected in Knight Fight. I can't say that this did my arm any favors. I got a couple of cortisone shots, and that helped me move my arm without pain, but several people have told me that cortisone is actually bad for you. Unfortunately, the producers had a change of heard at the last minute and cut me from the show before I got to fight. But the damage to my arm remained.

Then I went to the Pennsic War.

I figured I would stay out of most of the battles and only get into the bridge battle, where I could stand at the edge of the bridge with my 7-foot polearm and spear people as they came,a and take a knee if it looked like I would hurt my arm any more. That plan lasted wright up until the first time the enemy hit our line. you can see in videos of that battle me rushing to the front line to stop every charge against us, and join every charge by us.

Even so, I only felt the pain in my arm twice, when I moved  m my arm in exactly the way my torn rotator cuff wouldn't let me.

The worst pain at Pennsic actually came on two occasions:
1. I slipped in the mud
2. I slipped on some water at the pool in the hotel in which we stayed on the way back.
In both instances my body made a quick jerk in one direction while my arm kept going in another. This must have aggravated the tear in my rotator cuff, because it hurt o bad I could not sleep unless I put my arm over my head.

So I went back to the doctor and started some physical therapy. While it helped restore a lot of function, there were still things I just could not do, like swing a sword properly. So I decided to get the surgery to repair it. the trouble was, my insurance wouldn't cover it from the particular doctor I was seeing.

Fortunately, my lady works at a very highly regarded surgical hospital in NYC, and knows the best doctor for this kind of surgery. He agreed to see me, they took my insurance, and I look forward to having a surgery date set up soon.

In the meantime, however, I had been running the SCA fighter practice in Brooklyn. I have also been doing Insanity workouts 2-4 times a week (see my fitness blog for how that's going). I have included some conditioning training in the program at fighter practice, and have taken to wearing my armor, though I was not actually fighting in it (I needed to re-do the helmet padding, anyway). I was using my left arm to demonstrate the sword techniques. I was watching the mostly-brand-new fighters grown and improve every week. I was thrilled by their progress. One of them eve got authorized in July!

I decided to go back to the Armored Combat League practice at SCNYC. I got through the fitness and technique drills without any problems. Then came the time for free sparing with padded weapons and gear.

Now, it had been years since I fought in one-on-one matches in this sport. Not since my knee injury, back when most of the fighters in the game were mid-life crisis SCA duke-knights, had I truly banged it out by these rules. Now the NYC team was almost entirely younger, never-SCA types whose primary fight training was at SCNYC. I honestly wanted to test my mettle against them

I fought four one-minute rounds, each against a different person. I struck each of them with my sword in my left hand at least twice as often as they struck me, beating all of them on points except the last guy, who only beat me by hitting me on the head so hard I decided to stop before the round was over (no need to risk concussion or spine injury in a practice). And I did all this with my right arm holding a shield close to my chest and not moving it to defend myself.

Then came this year's Pennsic.

Again, I said I would only fight in the bridge battle. Unlike last year however, the bridge battle was not a 90-minuter resurrection battle where you could go back in after ever "death," it was just four rounds of battle with one death each. I managed to make each death count, and even killed a few in the process. No pain or discomfort in the arm at all.I never had to use it in a manner in which I was not able.

So when I got back home, I figured, "why don't I put my sword in my left hand, hold a shield against my body like I did at SCNYC, and see how I do?

So at the next fighter practice I did just that, fighting against all three of the fighters who showed up in succession.

And I kicked a little ass.

This is not to say that these fighters did poorly. I was actually quite proud of how they were able to stay out of my range and defend against a lot of my shots. They scored a good number of good blows on my head and body. But I was able to strike and make blows count. I was able to control my attack and maintain my own pace. There was a blow or two that a couple of them had been not executing to their greatest benefit, and I was able to use that blow against them by doing it as I meant it to be done.

One interesting thing I discovered was that it was not difficult at all to learn good technique with my left arm. I had been teaching folks how to strike with an SCA sword for some time now, so I knew  the mechanics, and it all just transferred quite easily. Thus, when it came time to fight, all the technique in the arm was already there.

This is probably why I did so well against the ACL folks. The rules of the duels only scored points for weapon strikes, takedowns, and disarms, and I stayed away from hand-to-hand clinching as much as possible. Like MMA fighters, ACL fighters must learn punching, kicking, and grappling as well as weapon technique for the melees, so they can't focus as much time on the weapons as SCA fighters do. Meanwhile, folks in the SCA have spent the past 50  + years figuring out how to hit people in the head with a stick, so we literally have it down to a science.

This is sort of why MMA fighters and boxers tend to not do so well in each others' sport. The main reason I was doing so well was the particular ruleset for the sparring rewarded what I had just spent months training for (with my left arm). I am sure that, just as the extremely hard blow to the head put me out, I would not have done so well had the fight come to wrestling or more punching and kicking.

So I will continue to train this way until my surgery, take the necessary time off, then get back in the game with a vengeance!