Belegarth fighters prepare for their next attack. Gargoyle photos by Chris Yoder. (Click to create a slideshow)

Students engage in combat and fight to stay "alive."

THEY STAND ON opposite sides of Uni Gym, holding swords, axes, and shields. Their weapons are made of foam, but don’t try to tell them.

When the two teams hear the shout “Go!,” the mock battle becomes more than a game.

They’re cautious at first, creeping across the floor tentatively, waiting. And then someone charges, everything changes, and Uni Gym is lost in chaos.

Flurries of foam swords hitting foam shields fill the air. Everyone tries to stick with their teammates and stay “alive,” but without battle uniforms it’s not always easy to tell who is on what team — until the end, that is, when a dozen or so of the 16 members have been finished off, and only a few are left to fight for their pride, their glory, or at least bragging rights among themselves.

Welcome to Belegarth class, taught fifth period over Agora Week by freshmen Charlie Newman, Miles Ross, Adam Joseph, and Eric Dietz.

Filled with freshmen, sophomores, and only one senior (Josh Chung), the class featured many veteran players. Before last year, the game was known as Medieval Combat and took place outside rather than in Uni Gym.

I, however, was taking this class for the first time, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I walked in on Day 1. By the end of the Day 4 I think I’d figured out a strategy: Get into an aggressive mindset, and fight for your life.

The combatants take a break. Gargoyle photos by Chris Yoder. (Click to create a slideshow)

The Belegarth mayhem resumes.

OK, maybe not your life. Since the weapons were made of foam, it didn’t (usually) hurt much to get hit. Not as much as you’d think, anyway. But whatever the variation of the game, you don’t want to get hit.

Before each mock battle, we chose our weapons (two of either swords, axes, maces, shields, or one javelin), chose our teams (I was usually picked near the end), and played.

I found that it was important to choose weapons that would suit one’s style, and since I didn’t have much of a style developed, I preferred to take a sword and a shield.

We played several different variations of the game over the four days. We played several two- or four-team battles, with the object to be the last team standing. (Alliances were similar to those in a game of Risk in the four-team games, although it was too hard to tell who was on what team by the end.)

Among the other variations we played were knights vs. knaves — a battle between the four best players and all the others; bridge battle — two teams facing off on a thin strip of floor representing a bridge; and kill the killer — a free-for-all where a “dead” person could re-enter the game once his “killer” had been “killed.”

And that was what we did for four days, as far as someone sitting in the stands could have seen. But there was more to the class than simply running around randomly and hitting people with foam swords.

I had never been in a game where hunting down and hitting people was of such paramount importance. I’d been in intense competitions before, but none featuring this kind of intensity.

It takes an aggressive mentality to succeed at Belegarth, no matter what variation of the game was being played. When someone is charging at you with a sword held over his head, it takes an instinct to block the swings and fight — not quite for your life, but close to that.

You have to believe that the people coming at you can hurt you, even though the weapons are made of foam. Somehow, it has to seem like a real battle, and the better one can visualize the weapons as iron rather than foam, the more one can enjoy this game.

And as bad as it sounds, you have to want to hurt the other person as you’re charging toward him, motivated by something, anything. You can’t hesitate as you strike at another person, since that will only make it more likely he will strike back.

It took until the end of the class for me to realize just how mental this sport is, how one must realize in the beginning that the weapons are made of foam (so as not to be scared), and to forget just that while in the middle of combat (so as to be able to succeed). I never quite had that aggressive mentality to begin with, and that’s why I was usually relegated to the sidelines before most of the others were.

So after four days of getting hit more than hitting, I’d recommend this class to anyone who doesn’t back down at the thought of a foam sword swishing through the air.

Though those with an aggressive mentality tend to do better in this class, anyone who can hold a foam weapon can grow to enjoy this class after realizing that the weapons are, indeed, made of foam.