What Every Fencing Parent Should Know About … Pretty Much Anything (Mailbag Vol. 1)

Fencing Thought of the Day: Fencing tournaments are like soap operas. There are surprises, unexpected plot twists, and someone always ends up crying.

Oh, dear. It’s time again for the dreaded “I can’t think of a catchy intro to the fencing article” realization, which leads to the even more dreaded “let’s ask Chat-GPT” for some help intro. So here are three actual suggestions from Chat-GPT to the question of: “Please – (I’m always polite to our future AI Overlords) – provide me with a humorous joke to begin a fencing blog article”:

Riddle 1: Why did the fencer cross the road?

Answer: To get to the other piste.

Riddle 2: Why do fencers carry umbrellas?

Answer: To parry the weather.

Riddle 3: What’s a fencer’s favorite fruit?

Answer: “Lungeberries.”

Ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch. So basically, even if Skynet takes over, there will still be room for human comedians. And, I suppose, fencing blogs filled with bad jokes and, perhaps, recipes for muffins that incorporate “lungeberries.” Well, at least until USA Fencing wises up and replaces these articles with something that will get more hits, like videos of funny monkeys, talented jugglers, or – best of all – funny juggling monkeys.

Any monkey smart enough to learning juggling, however, likely would be smart enough to demand pay. So, I suppose that means you are stuck with me. But before I move onto the next topic of weapons care and repair, I thought I would reach into the emails fencing parents have sent me for an FAQ article. So, with more than a bit of editing to make me seem more insightful than I likely was, here is a summary of some of the email exchanges from the past few months:

By far, the most common category of questions pertained to tournaments. Here are some of the tournament-centered questions that came into usfafencingblog@gmail.com:

Question: How many swords and body cords should we bring to tournaments?

Over time, the amount of equipment we bring has grown. And grown. And grown some more. At Hadley’s first NAC, we brought two Y-10 and two Y-12 swords, with two body cords. In other words, the absolute hope-nothing-goes-wrong minimum required at the strip. Once she was out of Y-10, we repurposed one of the swords into a Y-12 sword and added a new one to move up to what then seemed like the indulgent total of four Y-12 swords and four body cords. Once she hit cadet and started traveling internationally it grew to eight, to allow for six tournament swords plus a few extra needing repairs. She now has even more – I’m kind of embarrassed to say how many – but this is due to a combination of unique factors, including that Princeton does not have a dedicated armorist (meaning that we are always swapping good and broken swords when we meet at tournaments), plus the fact that I travel to all of Hadley’s tournaments with an extra set of equipment to deal with potential luggage mishaps caused by vengeful airline baggage handlers and/or the Sadistic Fencing Gods (SFGs). As for body cords, they are indeterminate in number because – high school physics alert! – like Schrödinger’s Cat, they apparently exist in multiple states of being and thus defy any attempt to get them all into one place so that they can be counted.

Question: Oh, come on. How many swords do you own?

Okay, it’s fourteen. But one can’t overlook the small, but statistically possible likelihood that Schrödinger’s Cat could cause multiple swords to suddenly disappear into another location through quantum tunneling.

Question: Why do you bring so much stuff to tournaments? Is it really necessary?

Usually not. But eventually there will be one where everything goes wrong, like the international cadet tournament where Hadley snapped four swords or the Junior Worlds where she had five body cords fail. If you go to enough tournaments, eventually the SFGs will find you and the extra backups will come in handy, assuming that Schrödinger’s Cat hasn’t conspired with the SFGs to quantum tunnel the extra equipment out of the fencing bag.

Question: How do I know if my child should be going to local, regional, or national tournaments?

There is no “right” answer here, as it depends on so many factors – how old the child is, his or her goals, how resilient the child is when fencing tough bouts, what the long-term path is, and so forth. So here are a few considerations:

• Work Backwards From Goals. Different tournaments offer different advantages. NACs offer national points and the best ways to earn A ratings; regional tournaments offer regional points and the best way to earn B and C ratings; and local tournaments vary on ratings offered and offer experience at an easy-to-get-to setting. If you want to earn a rating, look for ones that are of the requisite difficulty to award ratings. If you want national points, then go to NACs or SJCCs or SYCs, depending on age.
• Consider How the Tournament Works Into the Long-Term Strategy. Local and regional tournaments serve a lot of purposes – providing tournament experience, providing a ladder of difficulty to acclimate to harder opponents in a tournament setting, keeping a fencer in tournament shape, helping to get ready for NACs, and so forth. Look ahead to the path for the upcoming year, including upcoming NACs, and consider how a path of local and regional tournaments can help set up the year for success.
• Consider How the Tournament Works Into Training. Tournaments are also a training opportunity and a testing of ongoing training. So take into account what level of tournament will help advance long-term goals by providing a good testing ground.

Question: How frequently should a child compete in tournaments?

Again, it depends. Probably a good rule is to compete at enough tournaments to be in a good tournament mindset when it comes time to compete at NACs but not so many that training is neglected. In part, it depends on how many tournament opportunities there are in the area. When Hadley was younger, she took advantage of the many local and regional tournaments in the Washington, D.C. area, which was often the best way to compete with older and harder fencers who were not at her club. Now that she is at the Senior level, she no longer competes in local or regional tournaments and only competes in college tournaments and ones that award national team points, even though there are plenty of options in the Princeton/New York City area, which is where she currently is most of the year. So tournaments need to be treated as one aspect of the overall training and evaluated in that context.

Question: Are there difference in regional tournaments, SYCs, or NACS in different regions?

Regions that encompass a number of strong fencing clubs, like the New York/New Jersey region, generally have much harder tournaments at the local and regional level. Note that it is possible for fencers from different regions to compete in regional tournaments outside of their region. Although they cannot earn regional points outside of the home region, it is possible to medal and to earn letter ratings. Thus, when looking at tournament opportunities, one should consider all nearby regions that are easy to get to.

SYCs tend to somewhat equalize as top fencers who are chasing points will often fly into SYCs that have fewer top fencers. That being said, SYCs located in regions and cities with a lot of stronger fencers still tend to be harder.

NACs tend to be similar from year to year, regardless of where they are placed. In other words, if one compares the March NACs or Summer Nationals to each other from year to year, they tend to be around the same level, regardless of the city location. The variation occurs more based on the time of the year, i.e., Summer Nationals will have more fencers, and more higher-ranked fencers, than other NACs at the same level. There also are variations depending on whether there are international conflicts, such as the conflict that occurs many years for the Junior Women’s Epee event at Junior Olympics, which traditionally has conflicted with the last Junior World Cup of the year, thus drawing many of the top junior fencers abroad.

Question: At what tournaments should we start? It is hard to follow all the options.

In general, you want to look at taking a laddered approach to tournaments. Usually one would start with local tournaments, either at the club or on ASKFRED. The next steps would be to consider regional tournaments and fencing up. For Hadley, when she was in Y-12 she was fencing just one level up (Y-14); then fencing two levels up in the first year of Y-14 (cadet and junior) and three levels up (cadet, junior, and senior) by her last year of Y-14.

There are plenty of goals along the way, such as trying to get a D or an E rating, trying to medal at local or regional tournaments, etc. When children start attending NACs, it is important to level-set expectations, as even frequent medalists at local tournaments can struggle at NACs until they get used to the higher level of competition. For example, when Hadley first competed at her first cadet NAC, we stressed that the goal was to make the cut and get to compete in DEs. So when she made the cut and actually won her first DE, she left with a smile and a sense of accomplishment, having exceeded her goal, even though she was nowhere near the podium.

In general, it is best not to get too hung up on specific goals or tournaments. What is important is for the fencer to be enjoying practice and training, and laying in a good foundation for future growth. If the fencer is improving, the results will follow.

The second-most common category of emails – well, it was random people trying to sell me services about how to optimize my website to get more views. (And here I thought including bad fencing puns was the solution; turns out it is sending money to a random stranger who contacted me on Gmail.) But in third place was a nice cross-section of fencing topics that led to some conversations that I thought merited inclusion here.

Question: My Y-10 daughter came in last in her first tournament and in the bottom half in her second. Should I be worried?

There is not a ton of correlation between how fencers do at the Y-10 and Y-12 levels and how they do later at cadet and junior. Many of the top Y-10 fencers, for example, are fencers who might have started a year or two earlier or who are naturally gifted athletes at a young age. These advantages, however, often turn out to be temporary, and it is the fencers who laid a good foundation – good technique, good training habits, etc. – who end up doing well when one gets to the cadet and junior levels. For example, at Hadley’s first Y-12 NAC, she finished dead last – zero pool wins with a horrendous indicator and a loss in her first DE. Just six years later not only did Hadley win a Junior World Championship gold medal, but her bronze-medal teammate was the person who finished second-to-last at the same Y-12 NAC. Rather than focusing on individual results, especially at such a young age, it is more important to take steps to ensure that the child is laying in a good foundation, is learning critical skills, is generally progressing, and – most importantly – is enjoying the sport.

Question: My child is in Y-10. Does she need FIE equipment?

No. There is nothing in the USA fencing rules that requires FIE equipment, at any level. Further, the biggest difference between FIE uniforms and the USA standard is the piercing standard. FIE jackets and knickers pass an 800 Newton pressure test, while non-FIE jackets are usually 350 Newton. (For fencing parents who have put high school physics into the farthest recesses of their internal hard drives, and who already are wondering whether a fencing column that has mentioned Schrödinger’s cat several times will have a physics pop quiz at the end, one newton is equal to 1 kilogram meter per second squared, meaning that the FIE uniform requires more force to be pierced.) There is no safety-related reason for a young child fencing other young children to need that kind of piercing resistance, or for the parent to pay the extra money to get an FIE uniform that will be outgrown quite quickly. That being said, we bought Hadley an FIE mask to go with her standard uniform when she was very young because, in the words of my wife, “she has only one head.”

Question: How do you create the fencing calendar you mentioned?

Just pull up Excel and start a new document. Type in “calendar” and pick one that looks nice to you. I use the one labeled “academic calendar.” If you go to the top left cell, you can start it at whatever month you want. I always start on August 1st to begin a new season.

Question: Will you write an article about equipment and repairs?

Yes! My plan is to write about everything and to keep writing until I run out of awful fencing puns. Since the bar I set for an adequate fencing-related joke or pun is obviously quite low, this gives me a lot of runway.

I love your “humorous fencing asides!” What’s next, fencing limericks?

Ooh, is that a challenge? Okay, here it goes:

A fencer with moves like a cat,

Chased foes like a mouse or a rat.

He pushed them back on the strip,

Attacking was his catnip.

When cornered they tripped his fleche trap.

A witty fencer named Dan was a bloke,

Who’d alternate points with a joke.

He would parry so fine,

Then drop a cool line.

His punny fencing was his true master stroke.

[Drops mic and walks away. Schrödinger’s cat couldn’t do any better.]

By the 17th century, many European countries had developed codes of dueling that dictated when and how duels could take place, often to settle matters of honor. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, dueling declined due to legal prohibitions and changing social norms, and fencing became primarily a sport rather than a way to settle disputes. Which is fortunate – I think we can all agree that the world is a better place if social media influencers compete to get likes by posting funny baby videos rather than true fencing duels.

Want to send a request for a future blog topic or have comments on the article? Just want to tell me that my articles serve the “duel” purpose of slaughtering the English language and all sense of a proper pun? Send me an email at usfafencingblog@gmail.com. If it is not diverted by Schrödinger’s cat then I might answer it.

If you missed any prior posts in this series that is clearly growing faster than my ability to come up with decent fencing-related jokes, check them out at the USFA Parents’ Fencing Blog Website. For questions about your membership or tournament registrations – or just to ask USA Fencing leadership why in the world they are wasting server space on my articles when they could be using it to post videos of funny, juggling monkeys – please visit the USA Fencing Contact Us page.