San Fancisco Fencing Scene

[PeterofPan]

I am taking a trip to Berkeley from 4th November to 17 November and have been pondering about the possibility of taking some fencing gear with me and checking out the fencing scenery of San Francisco. It would be helpful if you could give me some information about good clubs for foil/epee fencer, the general atmosphere of the clubs or just some local fencing anectodes. Also it would be nice to know if there are some open [Eupsters allowed] fencing competitions during my stay.

Thanks,
Pekka

[veeco]

Take a look at the BayCup website:
http://www.olagrande.net/users/edew/baycup.

There is a list of clubs in the SF Bay Area,
as well as a competition schedule.

What weapon do you fence in?

[arcon]

[ 10-23-2001: Message edited by: arcon ]

[Sildar]

The only Bay area club I can speak of with much experience is Golden Gate Fencing Center. They've hosted some good tournaments, and the folks running things have been friendly when I was there.
The number one epee fencer in the US (Eric Hansen) currently fences there, as well as some other top notch folks. It might be worth a look.

[attila]

Hey hey

What every one else said. But please include the Stanford fencing group as well. They are about 50 kilometers south of San Francisco. Your post is from Helsinki. Do you know Sampo Herkkla? He was an exchange student in our area and fenced at our club.

[three_hundred_fifty_five]

Any women you see with an Adam's apple, not a woman.

[attila]

355

I bet that was the last time you tried to pick up a "chick" in the city.

[edew]

There's plenty of fencing in the Bay Area. As mentioned already, check out the Bay Cup website for local tournaments. People from Europe are certainly allowed to compete.

[edew]

This past weekend's Bay Cup featured a surprise contestant. Leslie Marx, '96 Olympian and currently professor at Rochester showed up to compete in the Women's Epee at the Golden State Women's 3-Weapon event. The event may have been better attended, but it was a good tournament for all.

Leslie won, and may be considering returning to the sport. Some of the younger fencers there probably didn't know what hit them. ("Huh? I thought she was just tall and thin, which made it hard to hit her...")