Fencing Supremacy

You probably know of famous baseball and basketball players like Mike Trout and Nikola Jokić, but you never hear about top fencers like Mohamed Hamza and Alexander Massialas. This is a result of generic American selection, which is when someone chooses a generic sport because their friends participate in it, or the sport is simply chosen by their parents. When the most common options of baseball, basketball, football and soccer aren’t chosen, fencing is usually not at the top of the list. The problem is that American parents are worried that their child will be injured by being stabbed by a blunt tip, believing that “fencing is too dangerous” and using that as an excuse for the inability to try and accept something new.

Before I learned to fence, I felt the same way — I couldn’t care less. When my current club offered a free lesson, I decided to sign up for a camp. I slowly grew to enjoy going to fencing and have gotten to the point where I am now on the elite team at my fencing club.

There are three different types of fencing: épée, foil, and saber, each consisting of different rules and weapons. Épée fencers can hit the whole body, foilists use the tip of the blade to stab or flick the torso target area and saber fencers “slash” the upper body target area. Foil, which is the weapon that I fence, has two types of grips: the straighter French grip and the pistol-shaped pistol grip, demonstrating the variations in personal fencing style fencers have. Whether you’re using different fencing shoes or blades, you can change very much to your liking.

Everyone should try fencing because anyone can fence épée, foil or saber — even if you are in a wheelchair or sixty years old, you could do parafencing (wheelchair fencing) or fence in Veteran-40 to -80 age groups. After starting fencing about four months ago, I won a local tournament, which shows that you can still be a top competitor no matter when you start. Then you can branch out and help others try to understand what fencing is really about.

Fencing is a sport that you can do for your entire life. According to childrenshospital.org, 70% of children quit youth sports by the age of 13. Fencing is a sport that always keeps you engaged and you can do it until you are 80 years old, or even older. Fencing doesn’t get enough credit, and we should appreciate it more.