weapon popularity: regions or phases?

[D'Artagnan1673]

Hey Tieur,

We had the first VB since 01 this past Saturday. The mixed events has 43 epeeists, 28 foilists, and I think 8 sabreurs. The only team event is sabre.

Here is a link to the results http://clfc.2itb.com/custom.html

[Tireur]

That's too bad, it used to be mainly a sabre event. Even the 3 man team sabre would have lots of teams.

[Katman]

Yah, sabre seems to be barely gasping along here in the Gulf Coast. Give it five years or so, though, and I predict it will increase sharply.

[hscoach]

I know you have one "A" saber fencer. Parkins, from Ohio State, placed #2 in Div1A last summer. When he won he commented that he was the first "A" in Texas.

[D'Artagnan1673]

You are right HScoach. I had noticed my mistake earlier but didn't think it big enough to correct.

[FoilyGeezer]

Connecticut is far and away Foil dominant, and has been since, like, forever. Mostly this is because Foil historically has been the only weapon fenced competitively with regularity in High School. There is some Epee and Saber floating around, but most of the competitive fencers seem to stick with foil until they go off to college.

[Namir]

Blasphemy!

RFC (and thus most of the nationally competitive crew) is foil-only,

RFC has alot of sber and epee as well but are majority foil. As is the rest of Mich. which is odd scince the rest of the greatlakes region is primarily epee.

[Maeve_Mari]

RFC has alot of sber and epee as well but are majority foil. As is the rest of Mich. which is odd scince the rest of the greatlakes region is primarily epee.

I believe Darius is referencing about Rochester, New York and you Namir referencing Renaissance Fencing Club in Michigan.

[Maeve_Mari]

RFC has alot of sber and epee as well but are majority foil. As is the rest of Mich. which is odd scince the rest of the greatlakes region is primarily epee.

I believe Darius is referencing the Rochester Fencing Club, in Rochester, New York and you Namir, are referencing Renaissance Fencing Club in Michigan.

[Namir]

Ahh... that could explain it, thanks Maeve_Mari

[AaronK]

Actually I don't think that the division has much influecne on trends in weapon choice. I would say it's more the nature of local coaches. Look at who's coaching in the area and you will probably find a predominence of that weapon being fenced.
Divisions with more than one strong coach in the same weapon in that area will probably mean that there is a strong number of fencers in the same area. I think that there are not as many saber coaches floating around out there which is why we see the numbers for saber lower than the other two (on top of the fact that Women's saber had not had a world championship event for very long)- fewer events in that weapon will translate to a need for fewer coaches which in turn means fewer fencers.
Unless there were 3 weapon coaches or fencing masters switching the nature of their focus or training, I don't think that fencers en-masse would follow a trend to switch weapons (now that everything is availible to everyone).

[dreadfoily]

I've noticed the same things, as a student. i think it has to be related to the weapon the coaches train in. For example in the south for a long time, the head coach of one of the salles was a saborist, therefore, most of his male fencers [at that time] were into saber, it opened up with an epee and foil coach, and the women trained in foil, while T.Cotton trained a bunch of epeeists. [by the way, T.Cotton is off for one year having hip replacement so, no more 'epee coach' in Orleans of his abilities]. Many salles have foil and saber, with epee taking 3rd place for some reason. Which I could find more epee out there, only foil where I am now for a while. Let's recruit an epee coach...