How did you get into fencing and why do you still fence?

[D'Artagnan1673]

The topic is self explanitory. I know he've had simular discussions, but we've a great number of new people on the board who'd probably love to share their experiences.

I first developed my fascination with fencing on March 22, 1998 when I went to the movies to see The Man in the Iron Mask. I really enjoyed the movie that time mainly because I avoided most of the crap it had and enjoyed the atmosphere and the costumes. I had never known anything about the 3 musketeers until that day. I fell in love with their romantic ideals and characters that day.

The next day, I checked out the Three Musketeers at the high school library. I had it read within a week. I subsequently read all the other books in high school while everyone else socialized. I even attempted to write my own play version of the final storey. Sadly, my writing skills weren't terribly refiend at the time and it fell flat.

Around August 2000, I started thinking about moving away from home after college to live in an area that had a fencing club. I went online to the usfa site and decided to see where the closest one was. Too my suprise, we had a club in Port Arthur all the time!!! I didn't find out where the club was until late January because the contact info never wrote back and I never looked deep enough into the division website to find their location.

I started fencing in early February and was hooked. I knew from a history channel show that modern fencing was nothing like rapier fighting. Still, it was a sword and I was learning how to use one.

I fence now because its a blast and its my opportunity to handle a sword. That is of course why I get off on rants about the modernazation of fencing.

[lochinvar]

I got into fencing because I wanted to be Basil Rathbone.

During orientation I discovered that my college had a fencing club, so I went down one night to check it out. I tried it, liked it, and stayed.

In the 30-some years since then, I've played other sports and games--tennis, golf, softball; nothing extreme--but something about fencing always draws me back. I've come back to it three times after years of hiatus, and it's still as fun as it was the first day I picked up a foil.

Now I fence for the exercise (it's about the only active thing I do anymore) and because of the good people I meet.

[damianip]

I had been meaning to get into fencing for about 35 years before I finally did. I used to see short bits occasionally on TV in Italy (we would spend most summers in Italy with my father's family).

I wanted to try it, but my father (being Italian) was convinced that there was no real fencing in the States. I would wait with anticipation for each Olympics to see if more than thirty seconds would be shown on TV.

Several times during adult life I "almost" tried it but never "got around to it".

Finally after my son finally burned out and quit playing soccer (I was a coach and ref, also), I declared that he had to have another sport to do.

I mentioned fencing, he said sure, and off we went to find a club. I wish I had done it 30 years ago, but, rather than have regrets, I'll just have to work at it more.

Certainly, the Internet has helped make it easier for folks to get into "peripheral" activities such as fencing.

Why do I still do it? I still have a lot to learn. The people I meet when fencing are great (for the most part). It's the most fun and the greatest challenge of any sport I've ever practiced.

Paolo

[counter riposte]

I got into fencing because I wanted to impress a gorgeous woman who said she enjoyed fencing. I was living in San Diego at the time, and was heading to Santa Barbara for school. Wanting so much to impress her, I told her I would be honored to fence her when I got back. (Anything happening after that point would be circumstantial, i.e. clothing hitting floor, etc.)

I registered for beginning foil the following quarter. I wasn't doing too well at that, and decided to get more practice by joining the fencing club at UCSB. There, I saw the most amazing sabre duel being faught by the fencing master and one of the veterans.

From that point on, I was hooked. I fenced sabre for a year and a half for UCSB, and came back to San Diego, to impress her with my stories. Unfortunately, she had moved on, and no longer enjoyed the sport.

I continued fencing because it is still fun, and the challenges continue to change. Besides, what other sport in the world hands two opponents WEAPONS and tells them to fight? I continue today to relieve stress (Nothing like chasing someone down a strip), Excercise, and most of all, fun.

[Moonitic]

ahh..Man in the Iron Mask. I have fond memories of doing a fencing demo/skit at that movie. Doug remembers too, I'm sure.

I started fencing 8 1/2 years ago. My rotten boyfriend & I broke up, & I was looking for something to do. A co-worker, a girl I went to high school with & I thought that fencing looked fun. I always thought swords were romantic. The men fighting over the woman...::sigh::...but it wasn't until I saw Kristy McNichol in The Pirate Movie that I knew a WOMAN could fight with a sword (this was way before Geena Davis in Cutthroat Island).

I'm the only one left out of the three, & one of the longest running members of the Schoolcraft Fencing Club. Even through babies & stress fractures, I'm still excited about getting on the strip. It's in my blood, I guess.

[Thaddeus]

yeah i think fencing is the best my friend had done it one summer at the local jc, and i always messed around with the foil in his room. the next summer i decided to try it. it ended up beig the most intertaning sport i have ever done. so now i have been doing it for two summers and i still have terible foot work <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> ........but dont we all

[D'Artagnan1673]

Moon,

I am pretty certain that some female actresses had fenced earlier because I've been pictures of Grace Kelly practicing for movies.

A couple of years before I started fencing, my best friend and I would rigg "rapiers" together and fight. We also used his kendo swords and even the toy lightsabers that come out every three years. I found out quickly that none of what I had done really gave me an advantage against anyone else. The only difference was that I was deeply in love with the sword and more than willing to take on the drudgery of learning its proper use.

[attila]

I needed to fill in my class schedule with a 1 unit p.e. class and the only thing I could fit in was this stupid fencing class.......

[Peach]

My kid fell into fencing by accident. The neighbors were taking a class and asked her if she wanted to go too. She was in fourth grade then. They stopped, but she kept on going.

I spent a few years following her around. I'm temperamentally ill-equipped for the career of "sports parent." I figure it's her sport, she does it for fun, and it isn't really my business to do much except pay for things and be handy.

I wasn't sure that people my age were allowed to tournaments--I'd only been to youth events, after all--but when my coach had a "parents' day" and we got to do all the things our kids did including dress up for epee and fence, I knew I wanted to learn even if I could never use it for real, so I signed up for classes. I was so surprised and pleased to find that grown-ups, even grown-ups who hadn't been life-long fencers, could compete in tournaments! (I asked for advice on rec.sport.fencing before I attended my first novice tournament in 1995--they told me to have fun--oooh, I was so scared.)

I started with foil but even though our club has almost no sabre fencers and women's sabre hadn't really taken off, I knew I wanted to fence sabre. My husband gave me my first sabre for Mother's Day.

Why do I still do it? You know, my first response is "because of everything."

- The people are really interesting and fun.
- It's the first sport I have ever been really good at, even though I've played a lot of other sports.
- I keep improving even though I'm getting older.
- Job, mother, husband, health, money, college tuition, taxes--I don't remember any of that when I'm at fencing.
- It's a spiritual discipline.
- I get to hit people.

And my daughter is still fencing because, as she said when I asked her, "Fencing's what I do." She's captain of her college team. But she likes rugby too.

[Sciurus Rex]

I began fencing because of a death-bed promise made to my great-grandmother. Mammy Petunia (as we lovingly called her) had been disabled for several months after an unfortunate taco accident -- the lawsuit is still pending on behalf of her estate -- but she never lacked for energy and enthusiasm for her favorite pasttime: cat wrestling. Day after day, she would call out from her bed in the attic, "One, two, three! Mr. Piddles is the new heavyweight champion!" or, "Illegal choke hold, Snowball - point for Cleo." And, yeah, we'd all chuckle when one of the cats would take a particularly hard slam on the mat, because it would shake the ceiling and knock spackle into dad's famous rhubarb pies cooling on the kitchen table. We just couldn't keep her from cat wrestling! And then one day, silence. An eerie calm rang through the house, sort of like the quiet you feel just before the dentist turns on his drill. We all noticed it at the same time. "What's that?" Aunt Wendy asked. "I feel it, too," Uncle Wendell replied. Then they went back to their jigsaw puzzle and I had to go upstairs to find out what had happened. I discovered Mammy Petunia lying so very, very still on the floor, a calico licking the old woman's bare feet. She had a glazed look in her one good eye, and she was mumbling something about Dan Blocker's genius performance on Bonanza as the lovably large Hoss Cartwright. I was able to rouse her enough to help her to the bed. Then she gripped my hand tightly and whispered in a voice that rattled my soul, "Sciurus Rex, you are the last in our bloodline. Your sister is actually an undercover federal agent, who was switched at birth with your real sibling so that the government could infiltrate our family." I tried to hush her, but she punched me in the nose and kept talking, and gasping: "You must (gasp) save our family (gasp) from being taken to (gasp) the dark pits of (gasp) ..." And then she died. So I figured, what the heck, why not learn to fence?

I've never regretted my decision.

Well, I regretted it once, during a back-to-school sale at the Marble Barn. But otherwise, everything has worked out really well.

[big poppa]

I walked into a fencing tournament by accident in my college gym ( i was not yet a student) I couldn't believe how cool the fencers looked in their whites and the sound of the scoring machines buzz, well the rest is history. Iv'e stayed in the sport because of the people, the fight and the sound of the buzzers just makes my heart beat faster. There are only two things in my life i would change: I would haver married my wife five years sooner and I would have started fencing at 13 rather than 18, besides Iv'e alwaays liked Zorro.

[Moonitic]

Whether females fenced in movies prior to 80-something doesn't matter...I had never seen it. It was The Pirate Movie that got me. Now that I've done the research, I know that Anne Bonny & Mary Read (plus a LOT of women before them...the first pirate captain was a woman) used swords long, long ago...before movies.

My only regret is starting at 20. But hey...I've had people fear me. That's good.

[D'Artagnan1673]

Sorry, Moon.

Didn't mean to come off as I did.

[Zelda]

Similar story to Moon's. Rotten bloody sod of a palentologist (may there be a hex on all his digs) boyfriend dumped me in Feb of 1997. By May my parents had decided that a nervous breakdown in the final year of my three year degree may not be advisable and started looking for things to do. My dad at the time was sharing an office building with an advertising exec who was doing the advertising for a fencing club. It was something I had always wanted to do at Uni and before but classes never fitted in with my timetable. So my dad picked up some proof flyers and booked me into classes. I loved it, it was the first time in 3 months I had felt like a human. I lived for the hour lesson a week where I could hit things. I literally was sitting on the doorstep waiting for Emma to open up on a Wednesday. She encouraged me to think about continueing. I did, my adopted grandfather bought me my first kit (all FIE) and started competiting. My only regret?? Not starting sooner and being able to work up through the junior ranks.
Forgot to say why I still do it....couple of reasons.
1. The comradire and people
2. Its unique and a talking point
3. My body shape appreciates the exercise
4. The ability to potentially represent my country.....

<small>[ 07-30-2002, 08:55 PM: Message edited by: Zelda ]</small>

[D'Artagnan1673]

I am sorry to hear that, Zelda. Love can be a wonderful thing, and love can be a horrible thing too.

I remember a line from a song by New Order

"Oh it dies so quickly
It grows so slowly
but when it dies it dies for good
its called love and it belongs to everyone but us"

Real cheerful eh? I remember the last time I got gutted by a girl I was so sapped of energy and ambition that I didn't do too much fencing. I just wanted to sit in front of the computer and play Age of Emrpires or download songs off of Napster.

[DJ Apostrophe]

I was talking to my girlfriend one day when she told me she joined the fencing club at her uni. I was fairly shocked as she is not the athletic type... Me being more supportive than anything else went to one of her first meets. I was amused, but didnt understand really... I went to all her meets that year and about half way through the season I found myself thinking about fencing all the time. She started me on footwork every now and again. I picked up an epee one day, and have basically taught myself... I continue to do it becuase I love to learn. There is _always_ something to learn in the world of fencing, Its great exercise, I'm fairly decent at it, The people around the sport are (mostly) wonderful. I love this sport. (tm)

[darius]

I find fencing to be a great catharsis from the pressures of work, school, personal issues, etc.

I was bummed out when both clubs in my area cancelled practice on 9-11 -- I considered attending anyway but heard the actual gym at U of Rochester was closed. Turns out that the few fencers who showed up were graced with the presence of Leslie Marx (decent epeeist), who felt similarly.

darius

[Inquartata]

Sigh...if I were to try to put it into words, I'd either fail miserably or go all purple on you. It'd be a loooong tract, too.

It just calls to me, that's all. I'd do it seven days a week, if I could. It's endlessly fascinating, endlessly challenging, endlessly changeable.

[Sildar]

I had always wanted to learn some kind of swordfighting, just because I always thought the swordfights were the most interesting parts of movies; as a little kid, my mother used to buy light sabres by the boxfull and we'd go out in the backyard and go through three or four a night. At first I thought I wanted to do kendo or something like it, just because of the samurai mystique, but upon trying fencing I quickly found the style more appealing to me. Now I'm becoming more and more interested in older and older weapons, to smallsword, rapier, sidesword...but all fencing weapons become more interesting the more I learn about them.

I also like the fact that fencers tend to be entertaining and eccentric company.

[KShan5[PrFC]]

I got into fencing mainly out of bordom. I stayed after school for about 5 hours some days, waiting for jazz band practice to start. This was around the end of September 2001, about 1 month after my freshman year started. Coinicidently the "captain" of the jazz band was the captain of the fencing team; and practices where held right near the band room. So I started going to watch since I had nothing else to do for 5 hours. My first impression was "cool, swords, can I play?" Of course I needed a permision slip etc. But by mid- October I started learning basic footwork, and it's been an obsession since.

I stay in fencing because a) like all other members of the board, I love it. But, also, I have played many other sports, soccer, baseball, basketball, football, wrestling etc. But out of all of those sports, fencing is my only real "love". All the others pale in comparision, except for maybe baseball.