Regional Collegiate Conferences

[reawl]

I'm trying to flesh out the USACFC website with some handy links to regional conference contact info. NCAA has four regions listed:
* Northeast
* Mid-Atlantic/South
* Midwest
* West

I've also heard of SWIFA and NWIFA and I'm not sure if these are a 1:1 mapping of the Mid-Atlantic/South region and the Northeast region. I know the MFC doesn't have a website but I do have the mailing list so people can get a hold of us should they want to join. So my questions are:

1) what regions exist out there for collegiate fencing?
2) what is the contact info/website for said regions?

Thanks!

[DHCJr]

I am afraid the Western Section does not have a web site. The Intercollegiate Fencing Conference of Southern California web site can be accessed through the Southern California Division Web Site, http://socalfence.org/

This consists of 7 schools, 3 being NCAA, Cal Tech, UC San Diego, Cal State Fullerton. The other 2 schools making up the west are Stanford and Air Force.

[oiuyt]

There certainly isn't a 1:1 mapping as you described.

SWIFA is in Texas (possibly exclusively in Texas, maybe including some school(s) from a neighboring state?).

NIWFA includes varsity and club teams from through the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions. NIWFA is women only (that's what the "W" stands for). Club members include Clemson, Marist, Queens College, Smith, USMA, Florida, VTech. Varsity members include CCNY, Cornell, Drew, FDU, Haverford, Hunter, Johns Hopkins, NJIT, Steven's Tech, Temple, Vassar, Yeshiva.

MACFA is a men's only conference that is primarily Mid-Atlantic (the "MA") but also includes some schools in New York. There is significant, although incomplete, overlap between NIWFA and MACFA membership. Also both club and varsity programs. Club members include USMA, VTech, UVA, William & Mary, St. John's College, Cornell. Varsity members include Johns Hopkins, Yeshiva, Steven's Tech, NJIT, Drew, Lafayette, Haverford, Hunter. I used to run the MACFA website out of the Hopkins domain but that appears to be gone now. Lafayette has a website for the conference that's a couple of years out of date.

NFC (Northeast Fencing Conference) is comprised of schools in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, men's and women's, varsity and club. Club members include UMass, UNH, BU, Smith, Dartmouth. Varsity members include BC, MIT, Brown, Wellesley, Tufts, Brandeis.

NEIFC/NEWIFA is a pair of conferences (mens/womens) that's almost identical in membership with the NFC but with several added schools (and also including New York despite the "NE" part standing for New England). Additional schools include Mount Holyoke, WPI, Amherst, Hampshire, Vassar.

NECCFL (New England Collegiate Club Fencing League) is a semi-official grouping of club-only teams from New England that get together a couple of times a year to fence either in dual meets or scrimmages and is designed as a developmental league for both upcoming club teams and referees. View it as a stepping stone for teams that are not yet big/strong enough to fully participate in the NFCs but want dual meet experience. Includes UMass, UNH, Smith, frequently Dartmouth, possibly to include UVM, WPI. Other clubs have expressed an interest but not yet participated.

Any club looking to join any of the New England/Northeast conferences should probably feel free to contact either UMass or UNH. We should be able to steer them in the correct direction.

Obviously you should be familiar with the conference(s) in the Mid-West.

Hope that helps.
-B :)

[reawl]

Thanks for the help oiuyt. Here's a question: Aside from the separate club-only conference, why are there so many conferences that cover the Northeast region?

[DJ Flow]

SWIFA is in fact a Texas-only conference, just as the old Southwest Conference was Texas schools w/ Arkansas tacked on. Membership tends to be somewhat fluid as weaker clubs periodically die out and rise again. The core membership consists of Texas, Texas A&M, Texas State, the University of Houston, and Baylor. UT-San Antonio's been a welcome addition. North Texas fades in and out, and there's been periodic sightings of Rice and SMU, but they've been down for some time. Texas Tech might be a possible addition soon, as their club is doing reasonably well, I'm told; the prohibitively long travel time (8 hours from Lubbock to Austin) might put a damper on that.

And, as I understand it, the reason that there are so many more leagues in the Northeast is because there's so much more fencing in the Northeast.

[Almightynoitall]

Don't forget the NCIFL!

nadi.calpoly.edu/~fencing

[oiuyt]

A couple of reasons. First is that they serve different needs. Second is that there are a LOT of fencers/programs in this area.

The NFC sponsors three dual meetdates each year with each school participating at two of the three and competing against every other member school once.

The NEIFC/NEWIFA ("New Englands") sponsor an inidividual invitational (similar to the Temple Open or Penn State Open) in the fall and a championship event (same format as IFA/USACFC/NIWFA) in the spring. New Englands doesn't sponsor any dual meets.

As mentioned previously, there is large overlap between these two conferences. Effectively they are one and the same but with expanded membership in NE's (which allows for schools that have trouble fielding full teams as required by the NFCs for dual meets (Hampshire, Amherst, etc.), that aren't always interested in more competitions (WPI), or that are a bit further away and already have a complete dual meet schedule (Vassar)). They serve the same area and mostly the same schools but different needs for those schools.

NECCFL was established to help foster upcoming club teams that could not yet meet the full roster requirements of the NFC. It additionally helps give club teams more competitions in an absolute sense, while adding to the number of competitions that a team has against other teams of a similar level. This can be especially important when a team wants competitions that matter but can still be used to develop upcoming talent within a team. Because the opponents are schools like Dartmouth rather than schools like BC, a sub can be used and expected to have a worthwhile bout. Throwing a first-year fencer in against a varsity opponent who fenced 4 years in high school and is in his/her second or third year of collegiate competition rarely leads to much worthwhile experience for either fencer involved. This helps fill out the competitive spectrum in a schedule for teams like UMass and UNH while providing a level of competition where a school like WPI/UVM can compete.

NIWFA is mostly centered around New Jersey. It pulls a few schools from the Northeast which has all of the above mentioned conferences. As with the NE's, the NIWFA sponsors an individual tournament in the fall semester (in this case at the beginning of December) and a championship in the spring. A couple of schools in my area (Tufts, Smith) participate. UMass used to until a) we realized that we were spending as much, exclusive of travel costs, on a meet for half our team as we were for dual-gender meets, b) that travel costs boosted that considerably, c) that we now had enough other competition opportunities that our time/money/effort could be put to better use.

MACFA sponsors both dual meets between each of its 15 member schools and an end of the year championship. As such it effectively acts sort of as an equivalent of a combination of NFC and NE conferences, just for a different geographical area. If I recall correctly this is similar to how the Midwest Fencing Conference works where you both fence during the regular season and then at a championships. It's good to have both, it's just that in New England there's a technical (albeit very small) separation of the two tasks which get lumped into separate, overlapped, conferences.

For that matter there are additional smaller conferences. There's the Eastern Women's Fencing Conference (EWFC) which is basically 4-5 schools in the Northern NJ/NYC area that get together to hold a confernce championship each year, starting about 3 years ago. Just this past year the schools directly in my area (UMass, Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Hampshire) organized the 5-College Championships. There at least used to be, and may still be, a "Virginia Cup" (or something similar) that was contested between the various VA schools (UVA, VTech, W&M). I'm sure there are loads of such competitions that are held annually.

And of course there is also the IFA which I should have previously mentioned but did not as it's restricted to only varsity membership (and therefore not of direct concern/use to the USACFC). IFA covers the greater Northeast and holds a championship each spring. Never having been associated with any IFA school I'm hazy on many of the details there.

In many cases conferences act as a way of institutionalizing annual meets and schedules. Because UMass is in the NFC, I KNOW that I can count on having 2 meet dates taken care of next season and who is going to be at them. Because we're in the NE's I have 2 more taken care of. By being a part of the USACFC I've got one more. NECCFL is a bit less regular, but most years I know that I can get 1-2 more meets there and know pretty much what to expect. I also schedule non-conference meets (annually we take a trip to Vassar and a trip to Sacred Heart). While we regularly attend these, the actual schools at each change year to year. That's both a good and a bad thing. It's nice to see consistent scheduling year-to-year -- that's what conference scheduling provides for. It's also nice to face schools we don't regularly see and might only catch every couple of years (frequently true with the Sacred Heart meets, which involve whatever NY/NJ-area schools have that weekend free this year).

Because the northeast does have such a high concentration of fencing programs a conference like NIWFA (mostly centered in NJ) and a conference like NEs (New England plus Vassar) can coexist with centers that are only hours apart but with fairly low overlap in membership. We have so many schools that we can make a conference of just the schools within a 2-3 hour drive and have it be a viable entity. Combine that with the fact that NFCs and NEs are only two separate conferences when looking at technicalities, and we have what appears to be an overabundance of conferences. They all serve different purposes and slightly different groups of programs. We have them all because each provides something special to its member programs that they don't get without it.

I guess that probably clarifies more than you were really looking for, huh? :)

-B :)

[disarmedfae]

sheer brilliance! i remember reading all the different schools' schedules this year and wondering why my team was in the NEIFC but not the NFC...i guess i was under the illusion they were one and the same.

-m

[noodle]

hopefully next year it will be more solid, but people in the south are trying to pull together the SFA - southern fencing association? southeast fencing association? i'm not really sure about the exact semantics of it... though i really want to see it work.

[fencerjake]

I am also interested in this. I am at RIT and have been looking into some of the different associations in the area. We are a club team. There are many in NE and i saw that Vassar was a member of one of those. There is also the Mid-Atlantic one i think. Does Western NY fit into any geographic boundaries between different associations or is it just where ever i try to join?

[TrojanMD]

The West breaks down into two well established conferences and a reasonably new Annual Invitational. As already nicely portrayed on Wafath's map, the conferences are NCIFL (NorCal + Nevada - nadi.calpoly.edu/~fencing) and IFCSC (SoCal + Arizona - www.ifcsc.org). The main difference between the two is that the IFCSC is a mix of NCAA and Club programs, while NCIFL is only club programs.

The Annual Invitational, to be held this year at UC Berkeley, has proven quite successful - it's a team competition, and while it was conceived to encouraging more regional interaction, we love visitors!! (yay, Temple and Florida)

[FencingKitten]

Agree with DJ Flow, SWIFA is Texas only, but as far as I know, it's only because of the OMG drive times to get to any of the central Texas hosts (every school along I-35 between San Antonio and Dallas!) from outside central Texas.

Recently, several individuals have pulled together to try to revamp SWIFA into resembling an actual organizing body that, if I recall correctly, seriously hopes to bring the program up to USFA standards, although not necessarily to be a sanctioned team event, and to revitalize it as a serious USACFC preparatory competition for clubs. I have very high hopes for the future of it, especially if I go to grad school in Texas!!!

[Chafunkta]

Originally Posted by DJ Flow

SWIFA is in fact a Texas-only conference

I'd love to compete in some sort of conference, but LSU is too much of a pain in the a#$ to deal with in starting a fencing club. I know, I've tried.

I do want to keep hearing about this SFA Noodle's talking about, though. Maybe if LSU knows there's a conference out there.....

[Wafath]

Originally Posted by reawl

1) what regions exist out there for collegiate fencing?
2) what is the contact info/website for said regions?

1) There are no regions for club fencing. There are many conferences, some of which were listed here. Most conferences are a mix of club and varsity.

2) Many conferences haven't bothered setting up web pages.

Take a look at: http://wayne.umdfencing.com/usacfc_map2.html

If you obtain more info, please feel free to PM me.

Also unmentioned so far on this thread so far is the BWCFC, a three year old conference that sits more or less inside the MACFA territory. All members are club teams.

W

[Wafath]

Originally Posted by fencerjake

Does Western NY fit into any geographic boundaries between different associations or is it just where ever i try to join?

Start your own. Seriously. You can try to join any of the neighboring conferences (MACFA, MFC, etc.), but in reality you will get more fencing faster if you hit the web, find collegiate clubs nearby, and invite them out to a tournament. Do a song and dance about wanting to create a conference, and with a little luck you will have one.

W

[noodle]

Originally Posted by Wafath

Start your own. Seriously. You can try to join any of the neighboring conferences (MACFA, MFC, etc.), but in reality you will get more fencing faster if you hit the web, find collegiate clubs nearby, and invite them out to a tournament. Do a song and dance about wanting to create a conference, and with a little luck you will have one.

W

i agree, if you really do want to fence in a conference but there aren't any nearby, its really much easier than people think to just start your own. just talk to other clubs nearby and do it. the hardest part is to get the ball rolling, but once you give it the push its all downhill.

[oiuyt]

Originally Posted by fencerjake

I am also interested in this. I am at RIT and have been looking into some of the different associations in the area. We are a club team. There are many in NE and i saw that Vassar was a member of one of those. There is also the Mid-Atlantic one i think. Does Western NY fit into any geographic boundaries between different associations or is it just where ever i try to join?

There isn't anything particularly close to you. Problem with being in the middle of nowhere.

Might be able to set things up with Syracuse, Cornell, or perhaps some Canadian schools. Other schools with clubs that you might look at: SUNY-Binghamton, Hamilton College, or a bit farther, Marist, RPI, Bard, Vassar, USMA, etc.

A few other SUNY's have clubs (Oneonta, New Paltz), but I don't know much about them. (side note: SUNY-Stoneybrook has a club, but is far enough from Rochester that there are many better options available).

-B