Articles by Sarah Potratz

Avatar photo
About Sarah Potratz
Sarah Potratz is a member and instructor with the Wisconsin Historical Fencing Association - Appleton where she mainly studies longsword and smallsword. Her love of history took root while interning in the UW-Madison Special Collections and Rare Book Library as an undergraduate and working there as a graduate student. After receiving her Masters' degrees in Library and Information Studies (MLIS) and History of Science,Technology, and Medicine at UW-Madison, she moved up to Oshkosh to begin work at Thrivent Financial as a corporate archivist. It was here that she started practicing in HEMA in 2016. She has also participated in the tournament circuit since 2017, traveling to both fight and teach. After recently being introduced to Grand Baton (bastone), she has started studying Giuseppe Cerri and will begin teaching that in Wisconsin in Spring of 2020.

Daggers in Men’s Smiles: Tournament Starting Positions versus Outcomes

July 22, 2020 Sarah Potratz 0

Dagger tournaments can receive an unfair reputation as stab-happy fights, with competitors disregarding defense for a ‘first-strike at all costs’ mentality. This paper will determine what proportion of exchanges in a recent dagger and ringen HEMA tournament ended with clean, contained hits and how many ended in doubles or hits with insufficient control