Thanks for the support! I don't think of this as making money OFF kids. I really enjoy showing them a sport they've never seen and they really have fun learning something about it. I do bring in my equipment and fencing DVDs so they can see real bouting. I think sometimes we want kids to get into serious fencing instead of having fun with it first like we do with baseball and basketball. (Although these days it seems that parents start grooming kids for college scholarship sports at age 4
)
To my flaming detractors: Kids start out with playschool basketball sets and whiffle balls, so what's wrong with foam foils? Could you swing a Major League bat when you were 7?
The keyword here is FUN. A lot of these kids aren't coordinated or strong enough to gain confidence in the mainstream school sports. Fencing shows them that small moves and thinking skills can work for them.
I have to give major credit for all my games to my friend Meghan. The kids would have played "Steal The Glove" for the entire hour if I let them! Simon Says gave all the kids a chance to use fencing terminology (ballestra, lunge, etc...). The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly (a king of the hill-type game) let them show off skills. Basically, they had FUN.
As for the cost, parents of these kids pay $150 for golf lessons! Mine was the least expensive class in the group! If they are interested in "real" fencing lessons, I give parents the names of our 2 local clubs that will accomodate them.
Maybe it's the start of an "out of the salles and into the schools" movement....
Linear Mode
