Stormont Fencing Club, Belfast

Stormont Juniors fair well at PWC Celtic Open
The PWC series for 2007/08 series came to a finale on Saturday 14th June with Stormont U11's doing well. Samuel Mars took 2nd in U11 Foil with Simon Carlise finishing 5th. In the series results Stormont took 3rd, 4th and 5th with Samuel Mars, Archie Highland and Simon Carlisle respectively. In the U13 Peter Carlisle finished 12th on the day but 5th in the series and Pablo Sharrock achieved a 10th in the series. In the U17 Girls Harriet Conner was 3rd on the day and finished 6th in the series whilst in the U17 boys Matthew Hale just missed a medal on the day finishing 5th (12th in the series), Paul Cuddy 11th (13th in the series), James Wilkinson 13th (14th in the series), Robert Cunningham 15th (16th in the series) and Jack Graham 16th (20th in the series).
Thanks must go to Jim Simpson of Bangor Blades Fencing Club and his team for organising the series of events and to PWC for there support and sponsorship.

Harriet Conner (left) 3rd place on the day & 6th in the series

Samuel Mars 3rd Place in the series and 2nd on the day

Archie Highland (left) 3rd in the Celtic Open

The new 2008/09 season opens on September 20th with the PWC North Down Open being held at Sullivan School.

2008 Carrick Success for Stormont
Stormont Fencing Club organised the annual Carrick Castle Fencing Tournament held over the weekend of 7th - 8th June 2008. This, it's 11th year, saw a superb tournament with fencers from around Europe attending. Many of the trophies were retained by local Northern Ireland fencers and Eszter Ballo of Stormont Fencing Club took 2nd place in the Ladies Foil - Congratulations Eszter. - Full report, photos and results in the Carrick section of this web site.

PWC Belfast Open Junior Foil 2008
PWC Belfast Junior Foil Competition held at Sullivan School on 2rth April saw 11 fencers from Stormont turning out to what was a great days fencing and probably one of the largest entries seen at any PWC event.

Samuel Marrs (U11 Boy's) Pablo Sharrock (U13 Boy's) and Harriet Conner (U17 Girl's) all fought their way to the semi finals winning 3rd places, Archie Highland (U11 Boy's) finished up 4th. The under 17 Boys faired less well with the top finisher being James Wilkinson at 12th. Also representing Stormont were Simon Carlisle (U11), Pablo Mattick & Peter Carlisle (U13), Robert Cunningham, Paul Cuddy, Matthew Hale and Jack Graham (U17).

Well done to all and a big thank you to the team running the PWC Series for all the work they put in. The next PWC event is on 14th June at Campbell College.
April 2008

Success at NI Nationals for Stormont Fencers
April 16th saw success for Stormont fencers at the NI Nationals held at Foyle and Londonderry College. Numbers were poor, partially due to the date but in spite of this Stormont fencers faired well with Eszter Ballo winning the silver medal in the Ladie's Foil, Jonathan Courtney gaining a bronze in Men's Epee, narrowly missing out on a place in the final due to a reoccurrence of an old injury whilst leading 14:12. Stewart Duguid lost to the eventual winner in the last 8 and an unfortunate ranking meant Stewart beat club mate David Cunningham in the last 16. Stormont was well represented in the Men's Foil with 4 of our junior members competing. They finished 6th, 7th,8th and 9th overall - you can see the full results of SFC members on our Competition Results page.
April 2008

Stormont Trio to Glasgow Open
Club Coach, Jonathan Courtney (Epee), Robert Cunningham (Foil) and David Cunningham (Foil) all made the trip to Scotland for the Glasgow Open on the first weekend in April. Held in Hutchinson Grammar School the event was a great success, a credit to the organisers. All fencers, although not finishing on the podium, acquitted themselves well with Jonathan gaining 25th in the Men's Epee, David 55th in his first competition in the dame event and Robert, fencing in his first tournament outside of Ireland finished 60th.
April 2008

Eszter represents NI at 5 Nations
Eszter Ballo was selected to represent Northern Ireland in the Ladies Foil event. The tournament, hosted in Glasgow at the end of March, was eagerly contested with the NI Ladies Foil team coming 4th and the NI Team coming in overall 4th. Well done to Eszter on her selection.

Corporate Night for Stormont
The Club ran a Corporate night for the Belfast City Chapter of BNI during March. 10 members of the chapter attended for a fun nights fencing. After a safety talk and warm up the participants were given a session on basic foot and blade work before being paired with a member on a 1-2-1 basis for further training. The second half of the evening was made up of a competition. Two poules were fought with a final DE. The final was fought between a Solicitor (Maggie Keown) and an Accountant (Bill Miscampbell) with Bill coming out the eventual winner. Pictured are Bill and maggie the finalists.
If your organisation would like to do something different for a a fun night out or team building event please email david@stormontfencingclub.com.
March 08

3rd at Irish Open for Stormont
Eszter Ballo once again had a great day at the Irish Open held at Dublin City University on the weekend of 1st/2nd December.
Eszter finished 3rd in the Women's foil competition which saw an all German final and 3rd= go to a Nottingham City fencer. Harriet Connor again had a good run finishing 14th overall having been knocked out in the 2nd round of DE.
James Wilkinson and Robert Cunningham both fenced in a large and strongly contested Men's foil. For both boys it was their 1st competition outside Northern Ireland. James did very well getting through to the 2nd round of the DE whilst Robert lost to a representative from Hong Kong in the first DE by the narrow margin of 8-7 having led through to the final 3 minutes

British Youth Championships
Well done Harriot Connor from Stormont Fencing Club and to all the other qualifiers for the championships.
Lets hope they can bring some medals home.
January 2008

Gold at Derry Open for Stormont x 2 Eszter Ballo (Stormont FC), in her 1st open event since moving to Northern Ireland, won 1st place in the Ladies Foil Event held in the Foyle and Londonderry College on 17th November 2008. Having beaten her fellow Stormont member Harriot Conner (3rd=) in the semi-final Eszter went on to beat Gillian Gemmell from the London City Fencing Club to take the title. It was terrific to see a large contingent of visitors from London making the journey to the Derry Open.
November 2007

This follows the win on 21st October of the Men's Open Foil at the North West Open, held at the same venue, by Gavin Williams of Stormont Fencing Club.
October 2007