College Fencing Is Growing. Here's the Team Making It Happen.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — While other sports are cutting programs and trimming rosters, college fencing is doing something almost no other sport can say right now: it's adding schools.

USA Fencing has added three new varsity programs this season — at Arcadia University, Fairleigh Dickinson University and Denison University — and a fourth announcement is coming before the end of May. That brings the total number of schools offering varsity fencing to 47, and it's no accident. Behind each new program are months or years of relationship-building, financial planning and honest conversations with athletic directors about why fencing belongs on their campus.

Brad Suchorski, USA Fencing's Director of Membership, Service and Growth, joined host Bryan Wendell on the latest episode of First to 15, the official USA Fencing podcast, to pull back the curtain on what that work actually looks like.

The broader college sports landscape is under significant pressure. The NCAA's House settlement has forced schools to realign budgets toward revenue-generating sports.

An enrollment cliff — driven by declining birth rates after the 2008 recession — means fewer 18-year-olds are heading to college, leaving smaller schools scrambling. Programs in swimming, diving, track and field, tennis, softball and baseball have all faced cuts in recent years.

Fencing is one of only three sports currently netting positive growth at the collegiate level. The others — women's flag football, backed by the NFL, and women's wrestling, which has had a decade of grassroots investment through organizations like Wrestle Like a Girl — are newer sports riding waves of national momentum. Fencing, by contrast, has been an NCAA championship sport since World War II. Its current growth is the product of sustained, strategic effort at every level of the sport.

"Not many sports can claim what we've accomplished over the last decade, much less the last two years," Suchorski said on the podcast.

Adding a college program is far more complicated than it might appear from the outside. When Suchorski meets with an athletic director for the first time, fencing barely comes up. The first conversations are about enrollment trends, facilities, storage space, staffing capacity and how a new team would fit alongside existing programs. Those are the questions that determine whether a program can be sustainable, and sustainability is the whole point.

"The last thing you want to do is start a program, be under-resourced, not be able to recruit, and then have the program shut down a couple of years later," Suchorski said.

USA Fencing uses pipeline data — namely, our membership numbers of well over 50,000 — to show athletic directors that there are real students interested in fencing who could fill a roster. That data matters. A growing pipeline signals to an administrator that a program won't just launch, it will last. Suchorski's team also connects new programs with grant funding through the U.S. Fencing Foundation, conducts site visits and works through financial feasibility scenarios with athletic departments before any announcement is made.

The process is part research, part relationship management. Suchorski's team uses a dedicated CRM to track every conversation with every university, including when to follow up after a soft no. Some schools have taken years to say yes. Some are still working toward it.

For a high school fencer, a new varsity program isn't just good news for the sport in the abstract. It's a concrete opportunity. That's because each new school adds roster spots, and each roster spot can represent a path to college for a fencer who might not have had one.

Fencing's cross-divisional competition structure is part of its appeal. A Division III school like Denison can compete against Division I programs. That's not common in college sports, and it's a real selling point — for athletic directors and for families.

USA Fencing also supports recruiting through College Connect, a centralized database that lets high school fencers message college coaches directly; college fairs held at October NAC, Junior Olympics and Summer Nationals; and Recruiting 101 panels designed to help student athletes understand exactly what coaches are looking for.

Not every college fencer needs to be an A-rated competitor. Not everyone is on the international circuit. The point, Suchorski emphasized, is opportunity — meeting fencers where they are and building more on-ramps into the collegiate game.

Growing college fencing isn't a job for one person or one department. Suchorski was direct about what the broader fencing community can do to help.

For parents: Research which schools offer both the academic programs your athlete wants and a varsity fencing team. The overlap may be larger than you think. Questions can be directed to information@usafencing.org.

For club owners: Make sure every athlete is registered as a USA Fencing member. That membership data is what USA Fencing shows to athletic directors as proof of a growing pipeline. It directly affects whether a school decides to add fencing.

For everyone: If you know someone in a university athletic department, make the introduction. Many of the school conversations that eventually lead to new programs start with a connection from inside the fencing community.

And if you have capacity to give, the U.S. Fencing Foundation supports grant programs that help make new programs financially viable from day one.

To hear the full conversation with Brad Suchorski, listen to the newest episode of First to 15 wherever you get your podcasts, on YouTube or at first-to-15.simplecast.com.