The first thing you see after the pools end is that almost every parent and fencer at the venue is staring at their phone, constantly refreshing FencingTimeLive. Before the screen even refreshes, almost everybody has already calculated the win/loss ratio and the indicator. Then comes the moment of enormous stress: the screen finally refreshes, and there are three main questions in everybody’s mind:

1) Where is my child seeded? 

2)  Who did he get in the table of 256? 

3) What will his path forward look like as he progresses through the tableau?

Somewhere a kid is walking off the strip, and the first thing he hears from the stands is a number. “You’re 154th.” Or “You’re seeded first!”

I often say to my fencers that pool results have little meaning beyond making the cut. But every time I say this and bring examples, people politely nod. Sure, it can happen, they say, but it doesn’t really. Last weekend at the October NAC, I got the best possible illustration, one that I hope will finally bring my point home.

Let me tell you about one fencer and his weekend.

On Friday, he fenced Division I Challenger, Men’s Epee. His pool did not go well. He won two bouts and barely made the cut. When the DE table came out, he was seeded 154th. If you had looked at FencingTimeLive at that moment, you would have written him off. Especially since he’s a Cadet fencing in Division I. No chance, right?

He then fenced eight direct elimination bouts in a row, starting from the table of 256. He won every one of them. Gold medal.

The next day was Cadet Elite. This time his pool was perfect. He finished first overall, the number one seed in the whole event after the pools. Surely a clean win, right? Well, maybe at least top 8.

I wish. He lost his first DE.

Same fencer. Same weekend. Same venue. Seeded 154th, he won the whole thing. Seeded first, he was out after one bout.

If you take one thing from this post, take this. Pools have exactly one job. Make the cut. Everything else that happens in the pools is close to irrelevant for what comes next.

Why? Because the DE is a completely different competition.

A pool bout is five touches in three minutes. A DE bout is fifteen touches, three periods of three minutes, with breaks in between. That’s not a longer version of the same thing. It’s a different game. In a pool bout, one good action and two lucky ones can win it before either fencer has figured anything out. In a DE, there’s time. Time to read the opponent, to make a mistake and fix it, to try something, lose two touches, to talk to the coach, and change the plan. The fencer who can adapt over fifteen touches has a huge advantage, and the pool barely tests that.

The score at the start of a DE bout resets to zero, and if your opponent is experienced, he doesn’t care about your pool record.

And think about what the pool seeding actually measures. Six or seven bouts of five touches each, against opponents someone else picked for you. That’s a tiny sample in a competition with 200-300 fencers. A strong fencer can have one bad pool. A tired fencer can have one good one. A pool with three strong opponents and a pool with three weak ones produce very different records from fencers of the same level. So seed 154 may well be a dangerous fencer who had a rough morning. And seed one may meet exactly that fencer in the first round.

And don’t forget a huge mental aspect of the game. The 154th seed has nothing to lose. Nobody expects anything from him. He walks into the first DE free, and every win after that is a bonus. The number one seed walks in carrying a number. “I’m first. I should win this.” I wrote about that trap a few weeks ago, in the “Could” and “Should” Traps. The first seed carries a “should” onto the strip, the opponent lands two quick touches, and suddenly the “should” starts cracking. And the first seed has an invisible target drawn on his chest. Everybody wants to get him: beating him is a huge bonus, and losing to him is no shame.

There’s also the wait between the pools and the DEs, and at large national tournaments it can stretch to 45-60 minutes. A fencer who finishes the pools with a perfect record sometimes has a long gap before his first DE as he often gets a BYE. He cools down, physically and mentally, and relaxes, because he believes the hard part’s done and an easy easy opponent is waiting. Then he has to switch back on against someone who is fully warm and fighting for his life.

Does the seed after the pools matter at all? It does. In a big event, a high seed can earn a bye through the first round, and on paper a high seed meets a lower seed early, so the first bout or two may be easier. That’s real. But the advantage is much smaller than parents think, especially in older age categories and in Elite and Challenger events, and it’s nothing compared to what the obsession around it costs.

And that is what I believe most parents don’t understand: the obsession over pool results has a cost. A kid who barely made the cut opens the app, sees a low after-pool seed, and decides his day is over. He walks into his first DE already beaten, not by the opponent but by a number on a screen. A kid who won all his pool bouts opens the app, sees a very high after-pool seed, and starts calculating his path to the final. He walks into his first DE thinking about the semifinal. Both of them are fencing the bracket instead of the person in front of them. And the biggest problem is that even when the kid doesn’t think like that on his own, his parents often nudge him into it.

And it starts even earlier, during the pools themselves. I see fencers who win a bout 5-4 and are upset because their indicator dropped. Or a kid who is already through to the DE fencing his last pool bout terrified of losing, because it will hurt his seed. They burn energy and emotion on a statistic that will be meaningless in an hour.

So what should a fencer do when the pools end?

Check one thing: am I in? If yes, find out when, where and against whom you will fence your first DE bout. That’s it. Close the app, and then do what actually matters for the DE:

1. Eat something and drink. 
2. Stay warm, especially if the wait is long. 
3. Refill your water bottle, and don’t forget the electrolytes.
4. Talk to your coach about your first opponent. If you can, watch him fence (if that’s what you usually do).
5. Check that your weapon is working and compliant.
6. Know your initial seed and your opponent’s, so you understand what P-red and P-black would mean in this bout.
7. Get ready for a fifteen-touch fight against this one person.

And parents, when your kid walks off the strip after the pools, don’t greet him with his seed number. If he made the cut, tell him he’s through and hand him a banana. That’s all he needs to hear. Whether he’s 154th or 1st doesn’t change the next fifteen touches.

The fencer who gave us both examples at the same NAC didn’t win that gold medal because of where he was seeded. He won it in spite of it, one fifteen-touch bout at a time. And the next day, the best seed in the event didn’t win him a single DE.

Don’t get me wrong. Pools deserve your full effort, your warm-up, your tactics, your attention to every opponent, because you have to make the cut and because every bout teaches you something. Once you’ve made it, the number on the screen should tell you only one thing: you’re still in the game, and it’s wide open.