I am so proud to report that our hardworking fencers earned 18 medals at this past weekend’s Northern California Region 4 RYC—beating AFM’s previous record of 17 medals in December 2014. It’s especially exciting to note that we swept the podium for TWO events: Y10ME and Y14ME.

All of you continue to amaze us with your progress, dedication, and success. Thank you to our coaches for the 15-hour days and all of the hard work that led us to this point. Thank you to the AFM parents who showed fantastic support to all of our fencers. We are overjoyed and excited for our winners, but more importantly, we are proud of the sportsmanship, positive attitudes, and friendship that we continue to see at every large tournament.

With a total of 435 fencers and 118 medals, this was a large RYC with many talented fencers. Here are some highlights from the weekend.

• Alexander Javorski placed 1^st in Y14ME, making this the third Northern California RYC in a row where he’s taken home the gold. His win put him at the top of the list for regional points in Region 4 with the highest possible score—600 points!

• Every fencer who attended our recent five-day camp had their best performance yet: Bartosz, Sonia, Leehi, and Adam with medals and others who achieved their personal best results and are getting closer and closer to the podium.

• For some of our fencers, this was their first competition. As always, it was a joy to see them thrive on the experience and receive help and encouragement from their more experienced teammates.

• We saw our fencers help not only our new fencers, but fencers from other clubs who were new to fencing. What compassion and kindness! At AFM we strive to be competitive, but we always feel that winning as a person and treating others with respect comes before winning a medal. These fencers truly represented our club with dignity.

Here is the full list of AFM medalists:

Y10ME – Podium Sweep!:

1 – Bartosz Kuligowski

2 – William Elloway

3 – Adam Chirashnya and Yasha Shur

5 – Sanil Sharma

Y10WE:

1 – Leehi Machulsky

3 – Natalie Gebala and Brianna Bell

5 – Noya Chirashnya

6 – Ishi Gaur

7 – Angela Du

Y12WE:

3 – Sonia Bulavko

Y12ME:

5 – Bartosz Kuligowski

Y14WE:

5th – Kaytlin Zou

6th – Sonia Bulavko

Y14ME – Podium Sweep!:

1st – Alexander Javorski

2nd – Arshome Sahagun

3rd – Michael Wang

Great job, everyone. Now, onto the next!