Longpoint 2019 Meta Event Results & The Indefinite Hiatus

As usual, Sunday morning is mostly about fog clearing at Longpoint. Half of our attendees are still in bed, and most of those are trying to sleep off whatever happened last night. The ones who are really dedicated are already attending classes. On this morning, we traditionally post the tournament results and our first announcement for the next event. So, here are the results!

Messer Triathlon

1st Place - Stephen Cheney, Medieval European Martial Arts Guild
2nd Place - Casper Ellestad-Andersen, Triangle Sword Guild
3rd Place - Robert Templar, Tosetti Institute

Man-At-Arms Triathlon

1st Place - Luis Torres, New York Historical Fencing Association
2nd Place - Dan Halliday, Liberty Sword Club
3rd Place - Lucas Marra, Laurel City Historical Fencing

Longsword Triathlon

1st Place - Kristian Ruokonen, EHMS RY
2nd Place - Tristan Zukowski, New York Historical Fencing Association
3rd Place - Tim Kaufman, New York Historical Fencing Association

Liechtenauer’s Light Pentathlon

1st Place - Ties Kool, Historisch Vrijvechten Nederland
2nd Place - McKenzie Ewing, Atlanta Freifechter
3rd Place - Eddy Louis, Forte

Liechtenauer’s Heavy Pentathlon

1st Place - Hank McLemore, Virginia Academy of Fencing
2nd Place - Bill Grandy , Virginia Academy of Fencing
3rd Place - Charles Lin, Capital Kunst des Fechtens

Congratulations to all of the fighters in each of our meta events this year. We asked a lot from each of you, pushed many of you out of your comfort zones, but you stepped up and did us proud.

Now, for our future plans.

There currently exist no future plans for Longpoint. Longpoint may return at some point with a slightly different organizing team, or some of the organizers may move on to similar projects, but those aren’t things we can answer at this moment. Because we don’t have the answers.

Last night at dinner, Jake Norwood spoke about the future of HEMA, both in the short term and generations down the line. Many people from about Jake’s generation up to about Ben Michels’ generation are burning out, retiring, or otherwise stepping back for various reasons. He called on the newer generation of leaders to identify where they want to see HEMA, and to act on that vision in constructive ways. He spoke about teaching our students to be active participants in the community, not just consumers of an activity, about encouraging the newer generations to open up the sources early, and about continuing to structure tournaments in a way to support our training and our goals, not to make them the goal themselves.

To those of you who have supported us, whether through attending and being active participants, implementing our ideas in other places (modified or not), being attentive training partners to the fighters who signed up to compete, volunteering to teach a class, or running one of our tournaments: Thank you. We have always appreciated it, and it’s been a good nine years.