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Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Meadville, PA
Posts: 588
| Sunday Times fencing article
This one was tucked away in the New York Times from this past Sunday.
The best line is about Michelle Verhave, who: "trades lessons for dental care."
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June 26, 2005
Picking Up the Sword, Purely for Recreation
By TANYA MOHN
ON a Wednesday evening this spring, a dozen or so adults, from their 20's to their 60's, attended Misha Shimshovich's class for beginners at the Fencers Club in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.
"You have to be strong like track-and-field person, and smart like chess person," the coach told the aspiring fencers in a thick Ukrainian accent.
Why are they here? Bill Bregoli, 50, a radio producer at Westwood One, said he had signed up because "tai chi got boring."
Adult interest in fencing has ballooned, said Rita Finkel, the club's executive director. Four years ago, the club offered one adult beginners class each week; now there are four.
Some people are taking up fencing because they are tired of going to the gym, while others are seeking new friends. Some just like the competition.
"When you put on the mask, you sort of turn into a different person," said Ray Sexton, 62, an optometrist from Round Rock, Tex. He and his wife, Diane Kallus, 58, a career counselor, began fencing when they were in their 40's, and now travel and compete throughout the world, often garnering top prizes.
At the Veterans World Championships in Hungary in 1999, for example, Dr. Sexton won a gold medal in the saber competition. "I like medals and holding your own with the younger crowd," said Dr. Sexton, who gave up golf and running marathons to concentrate on fencing. The couple will travel to Sacramento for the summer national championships sponsored by the United States Fencing Association, based in Colorado Springs; the events begin this week.
"As you get older, you are not as agile, but what you lose physically, you gain mentally," Ms. Kallus said, describing how she can prevail in bouts with younger foes. She also cites the health benefits of fencing, which is aerobic exercise, and the greater self-confidence it has given her. "It really changed my life - totally," she said.
In the modern sport of fencing, which evolved from dueling and combat, three different weapons may be used: foil, épée and saber. The target areas differ for each weapon, but the goal is the same: to hit the opponent without being hit. Because the movements are often faster than the eye can see, the touches are scored electronically.
Madelon Rosenfeld, 56, acknowledges being obsessive about the sport, which she took up seven years ago.
"I can't stop doing it," she said. Growing up in Iowa, she added, "I did everything I could to avoid gym class." Now a lawyer and independent movie producer living in Manhattan, she fences three or four times a week. "It's so different for me mentally from my work," she said. "It's the constant challenge to improve."
For Rick Estes, 53, a builder and chimney sweep in rural New Hampshire, the sport is all about fun.
"Everybody understands the mystique of the sword," he said. "I tell people, 'There is a little Errol Flynn in all of us.' " Mr. Estes built the Wicked Cool Fencing Club in Andover, N.H., so that he and others in his area would not have to travel far to fence.
Andy Shaw, the fencing association's official historian and the owner of a fencing club in Shreveport, La., says that while interest in fencing is increasing in the United States, it does not come close to that of the sport's heyday, which began in the late 1880's when fencing was a society staple in New York. By the 1920's and 30's, it had begun to develop a more democratic cast, as clubs in big cities filled with middle-class professionals. The sport had so infiltrated popular culture, Mr. Shaw said, that news media coverage was routine, and products like Camel cigarettes and Maxwell House coffee were promoted by fencing champions.
Many adults are returning to the sport. Diane Reckling, the chairwoman of the fencing association division that covers Westchester and Rockland counties, says that many adults who fenced in college take up fencing again after their careers are established and their children are raised.
Ms. Reckling, 61, a retired vice president at Citigroup, stopped fencing when her career began to take off, but she returned about seven years ago, calling the sport a great stress reliever. "It's kind of yoga for the mind," she said, explaining that when someone is charging at you with a sword, "you've got to zone everything else out."
A sign of the sport's resurgence, Ms. Reckling said, is the growing number of clubs nationwide. In the last 10 years, the number of clubs affiliated with the national association has more than doubled, to over 600. Just how many adults fence these days is hard to track, though, said Cindy Bent Findlay, an association spokeswoman, because not all fencers join the organization.
Global politics may have played a role in the rebound. "The best thing that's happened to American fencing is the fall of the Soviet bloc," said Jude Offerle, 53, a real estate agent in Winnetka, Ill. Since that time, many fencing coaches from Eastern Europe, known for its excellence in the sport, came to the United States.
After Ms. Offerle moved to the Chicago area from New York in the early 1990's, she said, she could not find a good coach and stopped fencing. But now, she added, it is easy to find excellent fencing clubs.
Many older adults, she said, are active in the sport because they have disposable income to support a serious fencing habit. She estimated that her costs totaled $6,500 to $7,000 a year for club memberships, travel to tournaments, and equipment.
Michelle A. Verhave, 46, a dentist living in Croton Falls, N.Y., found a unique way to defray the cost of fencing.
"I do a lot of bartering," said Dr. Verhave, who has several fencing coaches as patients and trades lessons for dental care. She is now the nation's highest-ranked female fencer in her age group and weapon, which is the foil.
Dr. Verhave fenced in high school and college, and was an alternate for the 1988 Olympic team. Eventually, she burned out on the sport and also started a family. But when her son began to fence, she took it up again.
Parents are sometimes led into the sport by their children. Marc Leffler, 48, a trial lawyer from Pomona, N.Y., began lessons last year, thinking that he could fence with his son, David, during his visits home from college. David began fencing in middle school and is now on the Princeton University team.
Mr. Leffler said that when he told his son about the lessons, "he stopped laughing first, then said 'great.' " Recently, the father and son competed against each other in a local competition. "I threatened him with withholding tuition payments, but he showed no mercy," Mr. Leffler said.
MR. LEFFLER notes another reason he took up fencing: he and his wife had become close friends with coaches and other parents at the Fencing Academy of Westchester, in Hawthorne, where his son trained and competed, and he did not want to give up those social ties when his son left for college. "We all travel together, eat dinner together," he said. "It's an older version of Little League."
Paul Levy, 68, a semiretired judge living in Lawrenceville, N.J., who is also chairman of the fencing association's veterans committee, says that "there are a lot better ways to exercise than this unusual sport."
"But we have fun," often fighting "for who pays for drinks afterward," he added.
Perhaps best of all, Judge Levy said, is that "when I fence a younger fencer, it's like being young again."
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