Once a sport that called the knights and nobles of the western world together for a contest of manhood, the art of jousting lives on in small groups of enthusiasts. One such group met for challenges in Frazier Park.
James Zoppe, resident of Frazier Park and founder of the American Jousting Alliance, hosted the first of what he hopes to be an annual tournament for jousters at Tait Ranch.
"We have never produced a full one-day event until Saturday," Zoppe said, "and we were happy with the way it turned out." Zoppe has been involved in jousting for 25 years, but it was in 1995 that he formed the American Jousting Alliance in an effort to promote jousting as a sport.
"In time," Zoppe said, "with us doing the kind of work that we did Saturday, we'll be able to get sponsors to get additional prizes and prize money and start making it more of a sport."
The winners at Saturday's tournament took some unique prizes. Jerry Gordon of Emory, Texas, won a metal-tipped throwing spear for the skill-at-arms competition, and John Swanson won the tournament by one point and received a hand-carved lance.
"We know we're on the right track with this style of jousting," Zoppe said. "You don't need a lot of armor, you hit hard on the shield to make a nice sound and get a nice adrenaline rush."
In the days that jousting was the ultimate test, the sport was very dangerous; today, it's not the vicious competition it was in medieval days. "Once in a while somebody will get knocked off," Zoppe said, "but we try not to."
"You know that's your comrade over there that has been trained to help keep you safe. He's not the enemy."
Though he admitted the sport is potentially dangerous, he noted: "If you do it right and you learn how to train, you have a lot of fun with it, and a lot of satisfaction."
Zoppe became interested in jousting as a performer. His family history is rosinback riding with the circus. Rosinback riding is the art of riding a horse while standing on its back. Rosin is sprinkled on the back of the horse to keep it from being slippery. Zoppe is a third generation rosinback rider.
Concerning his ventures into jousting, Zoppe said it all began with a Renaissance Fair he performed at in the late '70s. "They said, 'can you come back next year with your rosinback riding and do the jousting as well?' So I started researching," he said.
Nobody was hitting armor when I started; they just had big pads on the ends of their lances."
He first wanted to do jousting as a performance, and then in 1995, he formed the Alliance with a desire to take it even further.
He explained that a friend of his who wanted to joust in competition encouraged him to write the rules for the competition and, thinking himself up to the challenge, Zoppe proceeded to do so.
"The reason was to set a standard of weaponry and a standard of rules and guidelines to compete safely by," he said.
At Saturday's competition, there were eight competitors with six of the competitors competing in the jousting category."
"We're just starting to get a group back up," he said. "I trained a bunch of good guys and now they've gone off to do some shows on their own and so now we have another group trained."
Zoppe does as many as 20 to 25 shows or tournaments throughout the year around the country in venues like Maine, Florida, Las Vegas, and Colorado.
"As far as the events we do here, we're looking to do two a year up here on the mountain," he said. "If we could get a sponsor in Bakersfield, we're really trying to get to the fair there one year and have a tournament as part of the Kern County Fair."
June Woods
The Mountain Star
Frazier Park, CA