Questions about starting a new fencing club

[Taomagicdragon]

Hi all, I am attending ECSU and they have asked me to start a fencing club. Now, this is something I'd love to do, but I have little idea how to go about it.
What I am asking, then, is what are the aspects I need to worry about immediately. What should I work out schedule wise (it's a college club keep in mind) and anything else you all may have in mind. I have some ideas, but I want to know what you all feel should be done, so I'm keeping an open mind. Thank you and have a great day all!

[Ordway]

I posted a thread a few weeks back on a similar topic, so if you search you'll find a lot of useful advice!

A few thoughts on what has worked for me so far (our new college club is going extremely well so far). Things are a little different as I am the faculty advisor/coach rather than a student, but not too different.

--Having a demo was THE. BEST. IDEA. EVER. I put up flyers a few days before (nice, spiffy flyers with cool pictures of fencers, proclaiming things like "coed" and "no experience required", and the date/time of the demo. ). Then I got three friends from my own fencing club to help with the demo, who were perfect because a) they are amazingly good fencers, so the demo looked great, and b) they are college students as well. We held the demo in the middle of the campus commons, fortuitiously at the same time as the weekly "college hour" so there were lots of random passers-by.

After a short general demo of some fencing by my friends, we got interested potential members to suit up and get mini-introductions (about 5 minutes each) of fencing one-on-one. This was SUCH a good idea. It really gave people a feel for what it's like to do a little bit of fencing (basic attacks, for instance) and it "made it real." It helped enormously that my fencer colleagues are personable and friendly and really made every single person who tried it feel welcome and encouraged.

We had a sign-up sheet (no obligation) where people could put their names and contact info. I also made up a bunch of informational flyers with info taken off the USFA web site, about fencing, and had weapons and masks out on the table to see and pick up.

Response was phenomenal, AND more to the point, the people who signed up were more than just casually interested; by having done the demo they were really hooked.

--Also helpful was getting the director of student activities excited about the club. If they're already asking you to do it, sounds like the enthusiasm is there.

--For me especially, it was critical to get the most motivated people and start giving out officer positions ASAP (appointed for this first semester, elected subsequently) so that it was in student control as soon as possible. Spread the responsibility as much as you can, so that you have more people personally invested in the success of the club.

Good luck!

--Holly, coach of the MiraCosta Fencing Club

[rcmatthews]

How do you get people to come to your demo. In a large university community, we struggle to get people to come to our informational sessions, and the typically don't respond to our recruiting efforts. The typical response from girls is: "I couldn't do that, I would hurt myself" and the guys usually just walk past.

[oso97]

Originally Posted by rcmatthews

The typical response from girls is: "I couldn't do that, I would hurt myself" and the guys usually just walk past.

Well, its not like I'm trying to start a fight, or to cast disparations on the particularly university in question, but come on! Consider the university in question, Doc! OF COURSE the girls there are going to say that. OF COURSE the guys there just walk past.

If you want to market to those kids, you've gotta come up with a different angle. Tell the girls its a great way to make their legs look better (which, of course, it is). And then the guys will follow...

[Ordway]

Getting people to stop by and check out the demo was not a problem for us (despite being a tiny college). Getting the word out ahead of time with the cool flyers was helpful, I suspect (including in places that attract athletes, like the gym. Oddly enough, I didn't think of this until the day before the demo )

We got a lot of women interested, both in stopping by and in trying out the demos. I attribute this to two factors:

1. Coach is a woman, and a petite one at that. I.e. fencing = not scary and violent.

2. Male fencers giving one-on-one demos were very attractive I kid you not, I bet this helped a lot!

Having the demo outside, open to random passers-by, with the gear out to touch (Oh, OK, it's not sharp - but it looks cool) undoubtedly helped as well, but I'm betting on Factor #2 as a decisive one

[rcmatthews]

Well, first, I'm not Doc.

I also have found that one of our big problems is that people won't come because we have a small group of fencers. The people won't come until we have more people. An interesting and frustrating catch-22. No one wants to be the one to make the first leap.

To add, the girls in question are not exactly the type that you are thnking of at our university, but the point is still valid i suppose.

[wflaschka]

Originally Posted by rcmatthews

I also have found that one of our big problems is that people won't come because we have a small group of fencers. The people won't come until we have more people. An interesting and frustrating catch-22. No one wants to be the one to make the first leap.

To add, the girls in question are not exactly the type that you are thnking of at our university, but the point is still valid i suppose.

And sometimes there are... elements in a fencing club who will jump on girls like a trap-door spider the minute they walk in. (I don't mean rcmatt.) In step-class, women can do their thing. Sometimes I worry that in fencing class, women aren't leaving without being machine-gunned first by rapid-fire invitations to apartment parties. I'm trying to be mild.

One of our women fencers once reported the same phenomenon in her home-city over break. The only woman in the room, she was surrounded by guys who wanted to help her fence, and maybe do dinner.

The concept of "It takes women to get women (and also men)" seems intuitively true, and I want to believe, but I've never seen it proved. In fact, sometimes I think we'd have more women and men if we had gender-specific practices. It's something we're trying at the salle classes, though not by design, it just worked out that way.

I think the university is in a local low. We squandered interest while building the salle, and it will take a few semesters to rebuild the program. We actually do have the fencers, but on any given night when they show up, they won't run into the other fencers. We can't make people show up.

And I've heard the thing about the UM culture, it being unfavorable to self-starters/sweaty women, and there's some truth. I've experienced 3 colleges thru my life, and the UM students are hardest to engage. So the dedicated fencers we do have are gems that stand out from the rest.

[kalivor]

Originally Posted by rcmatthews

How do you get people to come to your demo. In a large university community, we struggle to get people to come to our informational sessions, and the typically don't respond to our recruiting efforts. The typical response from girls is: "I couldn't do that, I would hurt myself" and the guys usually just walk past.

Here's how we do it (and our intro classes typically average approximately 80 people, so we must be doing something right):

1. Our University has a "clubsfest". Basically, there are a bunch of tables, and people from every club on campus try to sign people up, while first years walk through. We have a table. On the table, generally, are info flyers, a sign-up sheet (which is not a commitment, just to say you're interested), one of each weapon and a mask.

Behind the table are several fencers. Usually a couple of them are fencing, the others are talking to interested people. We try to get them to sign up on the list, which is NOT signing up for our course.

We call out to people walking past -- there are a lot of tables, and a lot of stuff going on for first-year people. They won't look if you don't get them to, unless you've hot a suitable number of hot female team members helping out.

If someone worries that it might hurt, there are a variety of methods of showing them otherwise: You can hand them a foil, and have them hit you. They'll probably do it gingerly, in which case you can ask them to do it harder. Or, better yet, hit yourself with it, so they can see it's very flexible.

At the end of the day, we have a long list. On the day of our demo, we try to send out a reminder e-mail (bcc, of course) saying "Hey! You said you were interested in fencing -- don't forget that there's a demo tonight!"

2. Wallpaper the campus.

Existing team members put ads for the demo night up on every bulletin board on campus, and then some. We try to have good pictures on them, too.

....

And that's pretty much it. We usually have over two hundred people sign up on the "I'm interested" list, over half of whom show up to the demo.

Key elements: "All equipment provided." "Free Demo."

Obviously my team doesn't do Ordway's "everyone gets a chance to fence a fencer" thing in the demo -- that would take way too long -- but it seems to be a successful formula.

[rcmatthews]

Wow, thats very impressive numbers for recruitment. We had a similar table at a university club fair type thing, which was not very successful. This was not really our fault, as none of the other 40 or so clubs were generating much interest either. I'm thinking of targeting Boy Scouts and the like, and think we may have more success there.

WFlaschka
Groscorps has become rather annoying.

[Larrison]

Originally Posted by rcmatthews

[ ... ] . I'm thinking of targeting Boy Scouts and the like, and think we may have more success there.

Hmm... You might have more success doing a demo at a local high school, during lunch or during an assembly. If you can talk to the coaching staff there and point out that its and Olympic sport, that should help. I work with a local Scout group and they're usually involved doing other things, so its not like there's a direct link you can pull. I know there's a conflict in scheduling between Scouting and fencing in my personal schedule on at least one night a week and one weekend a month.

On the other hand, in the Saturday Intermediate fencing class I'm in, at leat 3 of 20 participants are also members of local Scout troops (they've worn Troop T-shirts to the workouts, from 2 different troops).

[Jay83]

Our demos worked well this year, we ended up overbooking our beginner class with Univeristy students. First of all, Demos have to be in a place where everyone will see it. Also, I always find that we get more girls than guys interested in the club.
The best part about our Clubs and Societies fair this year is that there was a variety show where the clubs and societies got to do a small demo. A crowd of interested people was Guarunteed.

Well, my advice for starting a club is... find out how your club can get some money to start. Some universities like mine offer small grants to clubs. That should help with advertising materials. I also find that a lot of highschool students are interested and they have their parents to pay for the fees. Some university students can't afford to pay fencing club fees... especially if you are just starting out and don't have gear....

[rcmatthews]

With the scouts, I was thinking of pitching it as some sort of merit badge type thing. Schools are an option, but there are several obstacles. One, why would a school allow you to come in and put on a demo during the school day? Pitching it to coaches I think would be a poor decision. If we are talking about high school athletics on an sort of serious level, the coaches are not going to want there athletes to move to another sport.

[Anhierd]

Originally Posted by rcmatthews

With the scouts, I was thinking of pitching it as some sort of merit badge type thing. Schools are an option, but there are several obstacles. One, why would a school allow you to come in and put on a demo during the school day? Pitching it to coaches I think would be a poor decision. If we are talking about high school athletics on an sort of serious level, the coaches are not going to want there athletes to move to another sport.

I've always gotten the feeling that highschool sports are more serious in other places (USA) then where I'm from in Canada, but I've been involved with demos and mini-classes for a number of highschools. Highschool gym classes in this area seem to be actively searching for alternative content.

The first highschool mini-class I was involved with was set up by a university coach who also taught at the highschool and knew the univeristy fencing coarch. Since that time I now belong to a non-university based club in the same city and other highschools in the area have searched us out and have requested similar mini-classes or demos.

You probably don't want to pitch fencing as a new school club sport (at least not right at first), but rather see the kids as a recruitment population for your club.

We've also done demonstrations for boyscouts/brownies/youth groups. Again, instead of trying to integrate with their program we just use the time to try to lure kids to our program. We get potential new fencers and they get an evening filled with an activity to keep the kids occupied. Win win.