A kid walks to the strip and tells his parents, “I should win this.”

Twenty minutes later he walks back, mask under his arm, and says, “I could have won it.”

I have heard this pair so many times that I stopped counting. And every time, I know the bout was lost somewhere between those two sentences. Not only on the strip.

Let’s start with “should”.

“Should” sounds like confidence, and parents like hearing it. It sounds like a kid who believes in himself. But contrary to what parents think, “should” is not confidence. “Should” is an expectation, a debt the fencer signs before the first touch, and now the bout has to pay it back.

Confidence says: I know what I can do, I have a plan, and I’m going to execute it until it stops working, and then I’ll change it. “Should” says: the result is already decided, my job is just not to mess it up.

You see the difference the moment something goes wrong. And in epee something always goes wrong. The opponent lands a counterattack you didn’t expect, or a lucky random touch on your wrist. You’re down 2-4. Completely normal. A fencer without the “should” in his head takes that touch as information. He didn’t know that counter was there, or that the opponent tends to wave his blade too much. Now he knows and adjusts.

The fencer with the “should” takes that touch as an insult. A touch that wasn’t supposed to happen. And it doesn’t go away. It sits on his shoulder for the next touch and the one after that. Every point he loses stops being just a point. It becomes proof that the “should” is cracking. Somewhere around 5-9, without ever saying it out loud, “I should win” quietly turns into “I won’t.”

From that moment he isn’t fencing the opponent anymore. He’s fencing his own disappointment. And that opponent never misses, because nothing lands more precisely than your own disappointment.

This is why kids who “should” win lose to kids ranked far below them. The lower-ranked kid has nothing to protect. He fences one touch at a time. The favorite fences the scoreboard against a number he wrote in his head before the bout even started.

Now the other side, “I could have won it.”

On the surface this sounds reasonable, even mature. He’s not blaming the referee. He sees he had his chances. But listen to what comes next. “I was up 10-8, I’m so stupid, I always do this, I can’t close bouts, I can’t fence priority, I can’t beat lefties,” and on and on.

That’s not analysis. That’s a kid beating himself up and calling it analysis. And parents often take it at face value, so now the kid must drill lefties or priority, because that’s what he said went wrong.

“Could” has the same problem as “should”, only from the other end. “Should” measures the bout against an expectation set before it. “Could” measures it against the same expectation but after it. Neither one measures the bout itself.

The useful questions after a loss are pretty boring. What was I doing at 10-8 that stopped working at 10-10? What did he change? What did I miss when he changed? And ultimately, what do I need to work on at practice next week to handle these situations?

“I could have won” answers none of that. It closes the book with a feeling instead of a lesson. And that feeling hurts, because in the head and in the heart it registers as failure. A kid who hurts after every loss starts protecting himself from the next one, and usually the way he protects himself is by walking into the next bout with an even bigger “should”. The loop feeds itself.

There’s one more thing these two words share, and it’s the one people miss. Both are built on old information.

“I should win” comes from the last time. I beat him at the regional in March. He’s ranked lower. Our kids usually handle him well. Maybe it’s all true. But March was six months ago, and at thirteen or fifteen, six months is a lifetime. He grew three inches. He finally learned to take a parry. And you changed too. Maybe you’re better than in March, maybe you’re coming off a pool that drained you, and maybe your upcoming SAT test creates a lot of anxiety. The “should” doesn’t care. It was written before the bout, from data that has already expired.

“I could have won” does the same thing in reverse. It compares the bout to the picture of the opponent you carried in with you, not to the fencer who actually stood in front of you. “He’s not that good, I could have beaten him.” Maybe he is that good. Maybe he’s better than he was, and better than you thought. That isn’t an excuse. That is the most valuable piece of information you got all day, and “could” throws it straight in the trash.

Epee punishes this more than any other weapon. There is no right of way, the whole body is target, and double touches score for both fencers, so whoever is ahead can ride doubles all the way to 15, even with less skill. Whatever the opponent shows you in the first period is fresh intelligence, and the fencer who reads the person on the strip today beats the fencer who is still fencing last season’s version of him.

So what do I want instead?

Before the bout, drop “I should win.” Replace it with a plan. One or two actions you want to do, based on what you know, with your eyes open for what you don’t know yet, ready to recognize new information, absorb it, and adapt.

After the bout, drop “I could have won.” Replace it with “what happened.” Facts first. Feelings are allowed, they’re real, a loss is supposed to sting. Give them ten minutes. Then sit down with your coach and figure out what actually happened on that strip.

Come to the bout with this mindset, and win or lose, you won something that matters, even if the machine says otherwise.

And parents, a word to you, because very often you are the ones who plant these words. “You should beat this kid, you beat him last time” is said with real love and a wish to give your fencer confidence. And when you say after the bout, “You could have won that one,” you mean it as comfort. But these phrases do more damage than help. Both land exactly the same way on a kid.

My advice is to refrain from post-bout analysis and leave it to the coach. If you absolutely can’t hold back, ask something else. What did you notice about him? What did he change? Or simply tell your kid you filmed the bout and he can go over it with his coach.

“Should” and “could” are both about a bout that exists only in the fencer’s head.

The only bout that matters is the one on the strip. Fence that one.