What Kind of Club do You Fence At?
What is the personality of your fencing club? Are you workers or slackers? Do you train fencing, or play fencing? Are you an athlete building up for performance or in a rec league of sorts?
Don’t know what I’m talking about, well here’s the story:
Last weekend I traveled up to Greensboro, NC to visit family and during that visit I got the chance to be thoroughly embarrassed and owned by some of the fencers at the Mid-South Fencers Club, now located in Durham, NC. (They had a location in Greensboro but life, job and alignment of the stars led them up I-85 to that town 8 miles from Chapel Hill, NC.)
I had a great time fencing. Now, I’m not a sabre fencer. I did some sabre in high school and have played around doing the foilist bag of “tricks” (read - line) on sabrists and most recently I’ve done a couple of epee tournaments. I went in just to see my old friends and UNC teammates Matt and Jen and, what the heck, get in a few bouts of fencing.
Matthew Cox and Jen Oldham Cox run a good club. Talking to Matt after practice I commented that the club “had a great community feel, but you knew it was a place you worked.” On the Monday after my visit I had a message from Jen asking me to clarify just what I meant. Well, here it is:
There are a few types of fencing clubs out there. They tend to skew along an axis of social time vs. training time.
The Social Club
The more “social” clubs are all about being away from the house and getting some time in with those who share interest in the hobby of fencing. The practice times at these clubs tend to be relaxed and have almost as much time devoted to talking (whether gossip, work/life advice, or debates of the finer points of point in line) as they do to the actual pursuit of fencing.
In the social fencing club, you come in, talk a bit, do some bouts, and generally relax and decompress over the day before going home or going out for a bite to eat or drink with your mates.
The Training Club
The “working” or “training” club, however, is devoted to training the athlete and getting them better. Time at the club has a purpose and there are regular practice sessions devoted to footwork, drills, and bouting. There is a minimum of chit chat as the athletes have goals for their training and they work to get in the optimal amount of bouts. These clubs can be managed to either a very rigid (coach directed) or looser (fencer-directed) training structure, but tend to have a feeling of purpose all about the club.
In the training club the you come in, follow the warm up routine, do your training, and generally relax and decompress over the day before going home or going out for a bite to eat or drink with your mates.
Note - In my view just being away from the stresses of work or home lets me relax and decompress and training really hard allows me to focus my stress energy into the bouting, so the end result of either club is the same.
Either type of club has it’s pros and cons. Me, I prefer the “working” model of a club. I may be a bit less inclined to do a footwork class and drills and want to get right to the bouting, but I’d rather spend my time at the fencing club fencing and working on my skills than talking. Once I’ve decided to fence in the Vet-40 events, I’ll put more emphasis on the footwork classes and drills because that extra structured work will align with my goals.
Some fencers approach the sport differently. Fencing and being at the club is a social outlet first and outlet for athletic performance second. Those fencers feel best at a club that fosters those elements and provides a place to learn and discover fencing at their own pace. They are generally not going to get the same competitive results and improvement over time as the fencer at the “working” club, but that’s not the primary goal.
I shared these thoughts with Jen Cox and here’s what she had to say:
What is the personality of your fencing club?
I am SURE someone from the outside can answer this question better than I. Most undoubtably our club is a reflection of the personalities of the coaches and our fencers. The space we have created allows for the unleashing of personalities so to speak that are reflected by our fencers. I believe our space to be causal, athlete-centered, and also carry a bit of mystique. We have some urban legends surrounding the space…. it used to be a car dealership, nightclub for many years and once there was a shooting there where the guy apparently died across the street in front of the funeral home! We are in the city center and network ourselves as best we can into our surrounding community. Community locally, across the state, and nationally is important to us. Over time, the personality of the club will change as our fencers change, as our club evolves and realization of our vision becomes more clear.
Are you workers or slackers?
We have both. Coaches are workers. Are hardest challenge now is creating a working competitive culture that builds healthy competitive relationships among the fencers. How can you be a competitive club and like your fellow fencers? There are a lot of “sick” clubs out of balance toward unhealthy competition. We don’t want that. Adding social components through camps, visitors, traveling helps to ease this negative cycle that can eat a fencing club alive… and I have a lot of other ideas on this.
Do you train fencing, or play fencing?
Both. We train fencing but we want our fencers to learn how to play the fencing game. There is resistance to this because there are so few healthy role models of what this can look like and it requires trust on the athlete’s part and a lot of time. Our fencers have taken a great leap of faith in trusting our vision. We will not let them down!
Are you an athlete building up for performance or in a rec league of sorts?
We offer both. As we have become settled in our space and our working pattern, it is clear these two options are necessary… but that pattern is always evolving. I think a healthy club needs both aspects to be viable and both “sub-communities” within the club need to respect the other “sides” of fencing, recreation vs. competitive.
Thank you Craig for being part of our fencing community!
Thanks for the comments Jen - Looking forward to the next time I’m in NC to earn a few touches against the crew.
Phil on 07 May 2009 at 5:10 pm #
“How can you be a competitive club and like your fellow fencers?”
Nice to read this as “and”. Some people assume you have to put a “but” in there.
Coaches lead the culture. With Jen and Matt at the helm, I think there’s a good chance that competition and camaraderie will exist and reinforce themselves almost without trying. But for some “insurance”, it might make sense to state the club’s values/intentions in plain English, and frequently.
One thing that impressed me about Carolina fencing was how your coach explicitly told you, “Carolina fencers do not hook up or unhook by themselves.” You understood immediately that it was about the team as well as the individual. Not just one or the other. Other models are perfectly legitimate — the point is that your coach made clear which one was chosen for UNC. If you like it, great. If not, then don’t join the team.
At best, stating things explicitly and out loud makes it real or makes you quit pretending. My business partner and I tell all our clients and friends, “we’re in this to have fun, do good, and make money — all at the same time. A project that only does one or two is not a good project for us.” Saying it out loud helps us stay committed. It also helps us attract more good business and less bad.
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OMG — did I just see Craig write about Vet-40?! Welcome to the wise side
Bill Lanier on 18 May 2009 at 9:10 am #
The same phrase in Jen’s response stood out for me as it apparently did for Phil “How can you be a competitive club and like your fellow fencers?”
Being an interloper at a world class training club for over ten years now, the one (probably the only) problem that never came up was of these highly competitive fencers (including three Olympians) getting along well with others. In fact, until Jen raised the question, it had not even occurred to me. Upon reflection it does seem reasonable that you might come to hate the person who defeats you; it is just that empirical observation defeats the theory.
Being active across the division, I ran into a single fellow, years ago, who was short to the point of rudeness before bouts. I finally confronted him about that; he responded replied, quite reasonably, that he fed on the energy of hate. After the bout, however, he could be, and was, as affable as anyone.
One of the things I learned in combat was that, contrary to the fumbling attempts at brain washing in basic training, one’s enemy is to be respected - that is the surest defense; liking or not liking has nothing to do with it. In fact, a soldier comes to have more respect for a brave enemy than a shirker on his own side.
I think that the way competitiveness is reconciled with camaraderie at our club is twofold: one, as in the military, one turns to one’s comrades’ for fraternity, not one’s coaches; and two, there is a conscious discipline that everyone fences everyone else. Perhaps the latter forces one to leave emotion out of it; otherwise one would have no friends at all.
All that notwithstanding, emotions often do run high at the club, and there is the occasional blow up. But almost invariably the loss of temper is directed at the self, for failure, not at the other.
Ours is at the training end of the continuum; we generally practice too late in the evening to leave time for going out afterwards. But birthdays are celebrated with a five or ten minute break for an otherwise forbidden slice of cake, once in a while a member will host a party, and there have even been a few field trips. The rest of the time, training is its own reward.
SaddlenSword on 24 May 2009 at 9:20 pm #
I’m new to fencing and am lucky enough to belong to a club which, at least for me, provides a healthy balance. Our regimen is fairly strict. We begin with warm-ups, move on to drills and then to bouting with an emphasis on constructive criticism and instruction. Chit-chat is discouraged but not forbidden. Our coaches absolutely insist on courtesy and sportsmanship at all times. At competitions we support one another in every way. Visiting fencers enjoy dropping in to fence with us. No, we aren’t a major sports center looking to produce Olympians, but we have a healthy proportion of rated fencers. I know that not all clubs are as friendly as ours. If this works for someone else, great, but it wouldn’t for me. As a trial lawyer and a competitive skeet shooter I cannot even imagine “hating” an opponent as part of my game plan. It would be a luxury I could never afford. Again, I do not criticize an approach that works for someone else: I simply prefer to take my fencing SERIOUSLY without taking it PERSONALLY.