Sabre in Baltimore/DC Area

[Vulture]

Ok folks, just caught and read the thread on strong foil and epee clubs in the area, which leaves me feeling quite neglected.

I will most likely be moving to the Baltimore/DC area (work location is between the two, and dont have living arangements yet) in late september. So was wondering what clubs are strong in sabre? I'm looking to get back into competetive fencing after being trapped in the middle of nowhere...

So let me know!

[Hamley]

Wow... another post conserning the baltimore area.

I would say SP or Salle Pallez would be the best bet or DCFC. At BFC there is like 4 saburers which isnt really enough to fence againts. I seen people fence at SP and thats where they hold all the Sabre compitions. And I dont know anything about DCFC fencing sorry

Good Luck

[CvilleFencer]

For Saber I would say that if you want to get into competition and have lots of people to train with seriously consider VAF http://www.vafinc.com/ Alexandre Ryjik is their head coach, they are one of the largest fencing clubs in the country and they have turned out some of the better saber fencers in the area and are the strongest saber club around (in terms of blood fisted thugs, er that is saber fencers) that I know of.

I would also suggest Dominion Fencing with Jill Feldman and Allen Evans coaching. They are a smallish club as they have are fairly new but both have tons of experience and are excellent coaches IMHO. I am sure you could learn a lot from them. My only concern would be that as far as I know they do not have any mid to high level saber fencers to train with. I could be wrong about that though, so do check them out.

As for strong saber clubs in the MD area... I don't think their are any, or if there are they do not get around to my side of the state line very often. Of course they could be cutting bloody swaths through NJ, PA and NY divisions inside their own section. At least in theory...

[sabreman]

The club I fence at is NIH (Bethesda, MD Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday) and it is pretty much a sabre only club but we are also building up foil. Larry Pinkus is the president / coach and Vitali Nazlymov is the sabre coach and Vatali Pokalenko (Urkraine) is the new foil coach. Most of the top adult (but aging) men sabre fencers in the DC area fence full or part time at NIH. Larry and myself are both formly nationally ranked sabre fencers. Most of the better open sabre tournaments take place at NIH. We also have occasional visits from World class Russian fencers and coaches. Also trying to build some youth sabre and foil fencing.

http://www.recgov.org/r&w/nihfence/

DCFC has Darius Gilman (Polish) as their sabre coach. DCFC appears mostly focused on womens sabre with one top 10 nationally ranked women. They also have one good adult male sabre fencer and some decent youth fencers (but not nearly as strong as VFA).

http://www.dcfencing.com/dcfc/

[Army Fencer]

Dariusz is a good coach. I expect within the next few years DCFC will have a very strong program.