For those who tried to start a pickup game of basketball in Fike during the last weekend of October, they might have been quite surprised to find tables and lines of tape replacing the shining court and the clash of blades and the beep of score boxes replacing dribbling. Fike’s basketball gyms were not used for casual games; they instead hosted Clemson’s annual fencing tournament: Tiger Open.
An individual tournament hosting countless fencers of all origins, ages and experience levels, Tiger Open is Clemson’s biggest and essentially only fencing event of the year, and it is organized and run by Clemson Fencing, a club sport at Clemson. In total, Tiger Open is made up of six events, with the three weapons, epee, foil and sabre, holding two events each: Open and Div. III.
The Open events were available to any fencer who had an USA Fencing membership, and many rated fencers participated, a few of those fencers being Clemson students themselves. As for the Div. III, it was limited to fencers who have a D or E rating, or were simply unrated. This allowed for less experienced fencers to participate in a slightly easier event and not have to face A-rated fencers.
When participating in an individual tournament, fencers are first assigned to a small pool and consequently fence everyone in their pool in small, five-touch bouts. All the fencers for the event are then seeded based on how well they do and participate in 15-touch direct elimination bouts. The last bout of an event is always intense, but sometimes seemingly random bouts also grow heated.
All of the foil and epee events for Tiger Open were held on Saturday, Oct. 27, with Open epee registration opening at 8 a.m. and the final bout of Div. III foil ending at 10:45 p.m. With 78 fencers in the Div. III epee event, a Clemson fencer and an alumnus secured the 16th and 17th placements, respectively. As for foil, Landon Byrd, the current coach and a senior computer science major, won seventh place in the Div. III foil event.
“It was a great tournament,” Byrd said. “Especially in the foil competition we had more high ranked and international fencers than in previous years. It was great to finish up my college fencing career at such a strong tournament.’
Many people came and went throughout the day, including Clemson students curious about the event. However, come the end of the first day, the gym was nearly empty, the trophies were passed out and the few remaining fencers left Fike to meet up with their teammates or to drive home. With the foil and epee events over and done with, just one weapon remained to fence: sabre.
Notorious for being the fastest of the three weapons, registration for Open sabre also opened at 8 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 28. The actual event began at 9:45 a.m., and it didn’t take long to reach direct eliminations and eventually finals.
For Open sabre, the final bout was between Sean Bates, an A-rated fencer from Queen City Fencing, and Clemson student Carlo Mellone, a freshman architecture major who earned an A rating in 2016. In the end, the Tigers won 15 – 12 and Mellone renewed his rating, keeping his A for another two years.
“I really enjoyed fencing at the Tiger Open,” Mellone said. “It was a lot of fun and a great experience meeting and competing with so many great fencers from the area.”
For the Div. III sabre event, two Clemson fencers claimed places in the top 30, and the last bout finished around 3:45 p.m. Clemson fencers from all weapons soon set out to break down the fencing strips, and some schools such as University of Tennessee chipped in to help.
By 4:30 p.m., the gym was once more a basketball court and Tiger Open was officially over. One can only look forward to the next year’s tournament and anticipate how well Clemson fencers will do then.
