Changes

I found an old picture of me the other day, taken at my very first Uprising. This was a while ago - at the American Falls site - and showed me with some other fencers. Aside from making me question the sanity of my wife for agreeing to marry me (did I really look like that?), it brought home the changes we've made in equipment requirements.

Aside from the epees we carried (I said it was a while ago), there were some other obvious difference. The first one I noticed was the gentle using a cervical brace as a gorget. Yes, it was legal then. I think I even used one for a while, until a hard shot to the neck convinced me that it's nice to have something hard between it and a sword.

The next thing I noticed was the fencing doublets my companions wore. They were fairly simple tabards that were simply wrapped around the sides - not sewn - and offering no armpit protection. While the protection was marginal even for the time, it was legal. In fact, I can remember when they first required armpit protection and how I thought it was a bit overkill. Sure, I knew that what deaths there'd been in Olympic fencing were from armpit shots, but it still seemed unnecessary.

The last thing I noticed were the masks. Now, you'd think that masks wouldn't have changed much in the 16 or so years since the picture was taken, but, well... There were no straps to hold the masks on and the closest thing to back-of-the-head protection you could see was a bandanna that I wore to keep the hair out of my eyes (yes, I had hair back then). And while I agree with the requirement for back-of-the-head coverage, I still think that requiring a strap across the back of the mask is a bit overkill.

But I want to fence, so I change my gear as the rules change.

Now even if my response to just about every change in armor requirements over the years has been "what were they thinking?" I've gone along with them with only a modicum of grousing. And I've groused less about the increases in safety than I have about the few instances when the requirements got laxer. And yes, safety requirements have lessened in two areas I can think of: the feet and the hands. Even though the current regulations say that cloth is sufficient to cover your feet and hands, I'm a firm believer in leather gloves and boots. Okay, I can see allowing cloth on the feet - this lets the new fencers continue to wear their Chuck Taylors until they can afford a pair of decent boots - but cloth gloves? You can get a cheap pair of welding gloves for under $10 and a good pair for about $20. And a decent pair of motorcycle gloves starts about where the welding gloves leave off. Let's face it: the majority of hard hits (hacks, especially) we're going to take are going to be to the hands and nomex flight gloves or canvas gardening gloves just aren't going to cut it. They offer no padding and only minimal protection against thrusts or cuts.

But I digress.

In all reality, armor requirements have actually remained pretty stable since the SCA adopted a Society-wide standard. Changes since then have been more tweaks than right-out rewriting. I think that says something about the rules we have. Better than 10 years without any major changes? We must have gotten something right.