New to Fencing>Parent's Guide to Fencing

Parent's Guide to Fencing

Why your children should fence?

1. Fun

Why is it fun? It inspires kids’ imaginations. It’s not hard to imagine that your opponent is Darth Vader and you are Luke Skywalker. When your children do this in the house and break an antique lamp, you discourage this behavior. But at the Denver Fencing Center, we can encourage this behavior in an ideal setting where they can live out their dreams and have a tremendous amount of fun.

2. Fencing is for everyone

Unlike most other sports, there is no ideal body type for a fencer. How can that be? Winning at fencing is a combination of many things: the mind of a chess player (watching for your opponent’s openings), the face of a poker player (bluffing your opponent), the flexibility of a gymnast (good for lunging), the hand-eye coordination of a calligrapher (Zorro would not be able to Z without it), and the endurance of a marathoner (to win a tournament with over 100 competitors). No child or adult, for that matter, is going to come into fencing with all of these different attributes.

When you come to the Denver Fencing Center and look around at our adult members, they are all different ages, sizes, and body types. Successful fencers will find a way to win no matter their body type. Here at the Denver Fencing Center we train each fencer with techniques to complement their strengths and supplement their weaknesses. Ultimately, if your child sticks with fencing, they will find a way to make their body type work to their advantage.

3. Self-control

Imagine standing there when a person suddenly moves quickly toward you with a sword pointed at you. What to you do? Tell your feet to move backwards, your hand to move your sword to block theirs, tell you mind to stop racing and think what you are going to do if you stop this attack.

As a fencer, you will need to have the self-control to tell your body to handle these three different actions at one time. Compare this with other sports that have you just try to kick or hit the ball. The strategy and self-control is an afterthought. In fencing, self-control and body-control are what keep you from getting hit.

By fencing, your child will gain greater self-control and increase concentration. Soon enough, this self-control will begin to extend to other aspects of their life.

4. Respect

Each bout that your child fences at the Denver Fencing Center start in the same way: with a respectful salute of the sword to his opponent, to the referee, and to the audience.

When fencing without referees, fencers are trained to acknowledge their opponents touches and often times even with referee, fencers at the Denver Fencing Center will acknowledge an opponents touch. Imagine in many team sports like softball or baseball, if the 1st baseman said to the umpire, “he was safe.” Or, imagine in football if a defensive player spoke up, “my opponents’ feet were in bounds and their touchdown should count.” While a rarity in most sports, this is commonplace in fencing and encouraged behavior in the Denver Fencing Center.

At the end of the bout, there is a required handshake among opponents. Winning and losing gracefully is not only encouraged, it is expected, along with maintain respect for the fencers and the referees.

Fencing is a sanctuary of civility and fencers for centuries have acknowledged the successes of their opponents. This level of civility goes a long way into making fencing a more respectful sport than most.

5. Socialization

Socialization is an important element of life. If your child takes a fencing class, they will likely take this class with children from a different school or perhaps a home school. By learning to meet new kids, your child will learn to interact with others.

There is general camaraderie at tournaments among fencers who see each other again and again. Fencers soon learn that it is advantageous to win and lose gracefully to continue to keep your opponents as friends.

6. Travel/Tournaments

As parents and children, fencing affords the opportunity to travel to various tournaments. The experienced fencers of the Denver Fencing Center travel to local, regional, and national tournaments. Here are some of the locations that our fencers have visited or will visit in the coming year: Santa Fe, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, and San Jose. Recently, our fencers have even received a flyer for a fencing tournament on a cruise ship leaving from Long Beach. While we cannot promise that all fencing tournaments will be in ideal destinations, fencing offer the opportunity to visit a new places and meet new people from across the country. Fencing tournaments are usually held in the off-season of a hosting city, making travel and accommodations more affordable to fencers. Some parents have found that fencing tournaments have afforded them the opportunity (or excuse) to get away that they might not have had.

7. College

Whether your child’s goals are to fence at a NCAA level or to fence at a recreational level, college is one of the greatest reasons to fence. Colleges are always looking for well-rounded individuals for their schools. Fencing can provide a terrific entrée to the elite schools by giving your child a skill that few possess, but these elite schools desire. The schools that have NCAA programs are looking for both men and women to fill out their roster spots. Some of these schools offer fencing scholarships.
Even if you aren’t one of the top fencers, fencing can add an athletic element to any application. Nearly all colleges and universities have either NCAA or club fencing program. Most people learn fencing in college classes, but your child will learn fencing beforehand and therefore be more attractive to the school.

NCAA Fencing

Here are some quick facts about NCAA’s:

1. Did you know that if you compete in these sports: Men’s basketball, Women’s basketball, Football, Baseball, or Men’s Soccer in high school, you have less than a 6% chance of competing in these sports at the NCAA level? Did you know if you compete in fencing in high school, you have a 50% chance competing at an NCAA level! [1]

2. Did you know that 2,095 student-athletes compete in fencing at a NCAA level? [2] Did you know that only 1,418 student-athletes compete in fencing in High school programs? [3] In Colorado, there are no competitive high school programs; the students from Colorado who go onto NCAA level fencing are trained at clubs like the Denver Fencing Center.

3. Did you know that twelve of the top fifteen schools have either an NCAA men’s or women’s fencing program? [4]

4. Did you know that the oldest trophy given in all of collegiate sports is the ‘Iron Man’ trophy given to top Men’s Fencing Team at the Intercollegiate Fencing Association's Championships?

Let the Denver Fencing Center work with your son or daughter to train them to get to this level of fencing. When the time comes to apply for college and college recruiting, let the Denver Fencing Center work with your family on identifying the right college for your child.

“I’ve probably put more kids in Ivy League schools than Hawken and University School [private schools in Cleveland] combined.” [5]

Coach Bill Reith
Alcazar Fencing Club in Cleveland


But don’t let your children have all the fun….

The Denver Fencing Center offers classes for adults. Click on the classes section for more details. Why your children wait for your class to finish, they can finish their homework in the waiting area of the Denver Fencing Center. So don’t delay, sign up your whole family for a class today.

[1] NCAA report on 'Estimated Probability of Competing in Athletics Beyond the High School Interscholastic Level
[2] NCAA report on 'Sports Sponsorship and Participation Rates'
[3] National Federation of State High School Associations Participation Stufy from 1971-00, data covers years from 1999-2000. From the NCAA.org website.
[4] U.S. News and World Report, America's Best Colleges 2004 Edition
[5] Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 12, 2003 edition.