Detecting two wires contacting with an Arduino

Question

I've just started messing around with arduinos, and I decided to start off by making a simple fencing game. I am trying to detect when a foil contacts their opponent's vest and then award a point to the relevant team but simply put it's not doing that

bool player1IsHitting;
bool player2IsHitting;
int player1Score;
int player2Score;
int player1Pin = 0;
int player2Pin = 1;

void setup() {
  // put your setup code here, to run once:
player1IsHitting = false;
player2IsHitting = false;
player1Score = 0;
player2Score = 0;
Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  // put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
if ((digitalRead(player1Pin) >= LOW)&(player1IsHitting == false)){
  player1Score++;
  player1IsHitting = true;
  
Serial.print ("p1Scr: ");
Serial.println (player1Score);
Serial.print ("p2Scr: ");
Serial.println (player2Score);

delay(500);
}
if ((digitalRead(player2Pin) == LOW)&(player2IsHitting == false)){
  player2Score++;
  player2IsHitting = true;
  
Serial.print ("p1Scr: ");
Serial.println (player1Score);
Serial.print ("p2Scr: ");
Serial.println (player2Score);
delay(500);
}
if (digitalRead(player1Pin)==HIGH){
  player1IsHitting = false;
}
if (digitalRead(player2Pin)==HIGH){
  player2IsHitting = false;
}
}

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated, Thank You!

Basic Circuit Diagram of what I'm doing