HEMA Ratings shows rising depth in women’s steel longsword rankings

Morgan Conway debuted at 98th with a 1,515.1 rating, one of 12 new fighters to land on HEMA Ratings’ June 2026 women’s and underrepresented-genders steel longsword table. That kind of entrance does not happen in a shallow field. It landed in a category that now had 1,096 fighters on the main island in the inclusive view, plus 41 more spread across four additional islands, with 19 fighters marked inactive after 24 months.

The top end was packed with names that already knew how to hold their place. Anna Solovey led at 2,001.7, followed by Iris Garcia, Isabella Panzera, Stevi Parker and Elena Muzurina. Behind them came another dense cluster, Rashelle DeBolt, Melissa Kleiß, Minna Vasarainen, Romana Shemayev and Caelyn Hamilton, while Michael Thompson, Sara Vertanen, Winter McCormick and Ramona Polidori sat close enough to the front to keep the pressure on every month. Reya George moved from 13th to 11th with an 1,814.2 rating, a small climb on paper that still mattered in a table this crowded.

The most striking movement belonged to Julie Seeley-Hall, who posted the biggest rating jump in the category, rising from 702.2 to 874.7. Rebekka Günther delivered the biggest upset, winning a bout with an estimated 7.75 percent chance. Those are the kinds of numbers that tell the real story here: this was not a quiet reshuffle of familiar names, but a month in which lower-ranked fighters could still change the shape of the list and force their way into the conversation.

HEMA Ratings’ system helps explain why that matters. The platform says it collects results from as many HEMA tournaments as possible, uses them for performance ratings, and relies on those ratings for tournament seeding so pools can be drawn more fairly. It describes weighted rating as a measure built from score and confidence, and its win-chance figure as an estimate of the probability of winning a bout. In a category like this, that makes a debut at 98th more than a novelty. It makes Morgan Conway immediately relevant.

The scale comparison sharpens the point. In June 2026, the Mixed & Men’s Steel Longsword page listed 101 new fighters and 7,623 fighters on the main island. Women’s Steel Longsword listed 8 new fighters and 633 on the main island. The underrepresented-genders and women’s combined page sat between those worlds, large enough to be nationally and internationally competitive, yet still compact enough that one result, one debut, or one upset could move a fighter several places in a hurry.