varsity fencing in grad school

[TrainingDummy]

In more general terms, provided the student-athlete can fit both schedules as a grad student and as an athlete,

Oh man, thanks for this. Made my day.

[jjefferies]

I am currently looking at graduate schools and was wondering if it is possible to fence varsity as a graduate student. Is this something determined by the individual school or is there a system that applies to all schools? I currently fence with a club at my school.

I will leave it to oiuyt to cite the rules. Personally I know that we had one fencer graduate from Cal last year (4 year scholastic program) take up graduate work at Stanford and be accepted to their team. I know for sure because our, Cal's, guys had to fence him at the Cal/Stanford game. But Cal fencing is not NCAA rather it is a club sport.

[MyrddinsPrecint]

What the members of the team do outside of their team practice doesn't fall under the guidelines for what is allowed at practice. Get outside of the required and organized activities and you're looking at completely different rules.

-B

For example, NCAA sports have seasons, and there aren't required practices outside of those seasons. However, at Smith, where the only particularly good NCAA sport is Crew, during the Crew off-season, there's an Erg Club. They happen to meet on a regular basis and do all sorts of training things that would be particularly good conditioning for Crew. If you happen to want to stay in shape during that time period and want to do so in an organized manner with friends.... well, it's there for you.

[Cookeit]

Reviving this post because I am still confused.

If I compete 4 years as a club fencer, then go to graduate school,
I won't be eligible to fence NCAA?

Given some of your posts, it seems like only people who fenced NCAA in their undergrad would be ineligible.

I don't understand why club fencing is being equalized to, say, Div 1 fencing.




Also,
Given the same scenario above, can I compete as a club fencer in my graduate years?

[oiuyt]

The NCAA probably doesn't care about the competition that you did as a member of a club team (check this with a compliance officer, as they do care about some stuff that I wouldn't always expect).

However if you've competed for 4 years during college then you've minimally probably run off 4 of your 5 years since initial full-time enrollment. You may not have used any years of eligibility, but you still only have 1 year left in which to compete.

Notice that for D1 that clock doesn't stop when you leave school. D3 you have 10 semesters of clock time. If you graduate and don't attend school for a decade you would be out of time for D1 but might still have a year left for D3. I'd have to go specifically look up D2 rules as I've never been a part of a D2 program so I haven't needed to know them.

If you want authoritative answers you need to talk to a compliance officer at a school (I suggest one you're interested in attending or are currently attending) and give them details of your situation.

As far as participating as a member of a club program, that depends on the rules of the club and of the conference(s) the club competes in. Some conferences try to match NCAA rules more or less closely. Depending on exactly how those approximations are written you may or may not be eligible. Others are significantly looser. You may very well be eligible for some competitions with your team and not others as the team competes under the rulesets of various organizations. This is not uncommon in the club world.

-B

[TrainingDummy]

Unless you are working on a bull**** degree at a Tier 3 grad school either your fencing or grades will suffer. You simply will not have time to concentrate on both.

Given the same scenario above, can I compete as a club fencer in my graduate years?

Several grad students fenced on our club team, including at US Collegiate Nationals.