Circle City Steel Clash VI lands in HEMA Ratings with 3 divisions

Circle City Steel Clash VI has landed in HEMA Ratings as a new event page, and the provisional numbers already sketch the shape of the day in Noblesville, Indiana. Created on June 25, the entry lists the competition as held May 23, 2026, at Indianapolis Fencing Club and marks it inactive while organizer validation is still pending, so the bouts are logged but not yet counting toward ratings.

The card is compact, but not small. HEMA Ratings currently shows three divisions: a mixed steel longsword pool with 74 fights and 25 fighters, a second mixed steel longsword pool with 43 fights and 15 fighters, and a mixed steel single rapier division with 50 fights and 16 fighters. That split suggests the organizers chose to divide the steel longsword field rather than stuff everyone into one oversized bracket, while still building a rapier lane large enough to generate a meaningful set of recorded bouts.

For HEMA readers tracking rankings, that is the detail worth watching now. Inactive events sit under review and do not count toward ratings until the results are confirmed, so the current page is less a finished table than a snapshot of where the density was. Longsword carried the heaviest load, but rapier produced enough action to matter on its own, which is exactly the kind of division-level signal coaches and competitors use when they assess how a local event is feeding the wider ratings map.

Indianapolis Fencing Club framed Circle City Steel Clash VI as its sixth tournament and priced it at $35 per event, with no hidden general or participation fees. Its format sheet lists Foam Rumble for foam longsword, Rookie Skirmish for novice steel longsword, Poking Fracas for steel rapier, and Steel Brawl for advanced steel longsword. The club also says the tournament awards first, second, and two third-place medals in each event, plus director-selected Best Performance medals, and its event history reaches back through CCSC I in November 2023, CCSC II in May 2024, CCSC III in November 2024, CCSC IV in May 2025, and CCSC V in November 2025.

That run matters because it shows the event has become a recurring stop rather than a one-off local bracket. The club noted after its May 2024 tournament that the field had already doubled in size, and the new HEMA Ratings entry now gives the latest edition a place in the same growth line. Independent listings placed the tournament at the club’s Noblesville venue, 1706 East Pleasant Street, starting at 2 p.m. EDT on Saturday, May 23.

Participant video uploads have already surfaced novice longsword and single rapier finals footage online, adding a public record of the day while the official validation step runs its course. Once that review closes, Circle City Steel Clash VI will stop being just a bracket on paper and become part of the live ratings record.