Knight School Course - Mighty Deeds Atop Noble Steeds
The News Tribune, June 6, 2005
| 
James Zoppe, aka Sir James of Lockwood or The Red
Knight, demonstrates ring tilting - spearing
4-inch rings with an 8-foot lance from the back of his horse -
Sunday on the Key Peninsula.
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A new jousting school on the Key Peninsula empasizes traditional
skills over pummeling opponents.
With their metal helmets secured and their colorful
robes flowing, the riders charged at full gallop toward each other
Sunday afternoon. One held a shield, an dthe other loosely grasped
a 10-foot long wooden lance.
The lancepoint struck the shield, but the rider
with the lance allows the weapon to slide through his hand, reducing
the impact. Both men rode away unscathed.
This wasn't your typical winner-take-all, hardnosed
jousting where riders actively attempt to unseat their opponents.
But Karl Anderson, a Lakebay equestrian enthusiast, is hoping
this traditional style of joust, which values technical skill
over bruising physical contact, will offer an alternate view of
the sport and catch on with riders looking for something new and
safer.
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"You can only ride so many trails," said Anderson, who
owns the Ravenswood School of Jousting with his wife, Kelle. "This is
not combat until the other person can't walk. It's a fun thing."
Sunday at Key Peninsula's Volunteer Park, Anderson hosted
an exhibition of skilled riders performing jousting skills to promote
his new school, which begins training its first class of students today
just outside of Key Center. Leading the demonstration was James Zoppe,
a 25-year equestrian veteran who has trained riders and horses for productions
at Universal Studios and films such as "The Fisher King."
Zoppe, who lives near Los Angeles, founded the American
Jousting Alliance in the mid-1990s as a way of setting standards to
teach and demonstrate safe jousting skills and competitions, he said.
Anderson's school is the only one in Washington affiliated with the
Alliance. The other chapter is located near Salt Lake City, Zoppe said.
Six students, including Joseph Leach of Tacoma, began
their six-day training session Sunday afternoon. Zoppe will test the
students' horse-riding skills before teaching them jousting activities,
such as how to strike a stationary target with their lance without losing
balance.
The students, who paid a $750 fee, also will learn how
to contact joust, throw a spear at a haybale target and lance a four-inch
hanging ring from a galloping horse. The training will culminate with
a tournament where the students will compete against each other with
their new skills.
Leach, who began riding just six months ago and has never
jousted before, said he's most excited to learn how to pick up the dangling
metal rings.
Samantha Wilson of Corvallis, Ore., another student in
the program's inaugural class, said she's been riding horses since she
was 5 and hopes to some day joust as an entertainer at renaissance faires.
Wilson, 18, said she jumped at "the opportunity to joust in an environment
that has a safer method."
Anderson's jousting school will train three or four classes
per year, he said. One goal is to have the students from the Washington
jousting school challenge those from the school in Utah, Anderson said.
The larger goal, however, is to demonstrate a different and safer style
of the sport, which has long emphasized physical contact over technique,
he said.
"That's not what this kind of jousting is all about,"
Anderson said. "This is more about skill."
Paul Sand
The News Tribune
Tacoma, Washington
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