NW Fencing Center Advanced Foil Camp : July 26-Aug 1

[darius]

NORTHWEST FENCING CENTER
2009 Advanced Foil Camp
July 26th – August 1st

Objective:

This camp's objective is to provide a superior fencing environment with an emphasis on competitive bouting (both team and individual) and technical and tactical skills. Athletes will be grouped by skill levels, and will receive both group and individual instruction.

There will be two camp sessions each day with optional evening bouting. In addition, camp will include a day-trip to an Oregon tourist site, two scheduled evening activities (such as paintball, lasertag or a swing dance night) and the River Run Foil tournament on August 1st. There will also be an optional whitewater rafting trip on the White Salmon River on August 2nd.

Coaching Staff:

Michael Marx earned his Master of Arms degree in Poland in 1992. Michael is a five-time Olympian and the only male fencer in the last 50 years to make the U.S. Olympic team in two weapons: foil and epee. He is a five-time USOC Athlete of the year and earned a record eight U.S. national championships in foil. He has coached the 1997-2003 Junior, Cadet and Senior World Championship teams and has had students on four of the previous Olympic teams. He has been inducted into both the USFA and Oregon Sports Hall of fame.

Buckie Leach – Fencing Master. He has served as both national and Olympic coach; his students have won World Cups and World Championships.

Thomas Theuerkauff -- Fencing Master, Medoc Fencing Club, France

Simon Abram -- Fencing Master, ASPTT Aix en Provence, France

Darius Wei – Darius is a former coach at the University of Rochester and now a coach at the NWFC. He has nationally ranked students in both men’s and women’s foil.

Cost :

The camp fee is $680, which includes camp, home stay (for campers under age 21), meals and NWFC-scheduled evening activities. If housing is not needed, the cost is $580. A nonrefundable $50 deposit is required to register; the balance of the camp fee is due upon arrival. The white water raft trip is optional and an additional $85.00.

Housing :

A limited amount of housing is available with NWFC families. Housing is provided on a first-come basis, based on date of receipt of registration form and deposit. No housing requests will be accepted after July 10th. Home stay campers will be met at the airport or train station. Please schedule your arrival no later than 7:00pm.

Registration forms can be downloaded at nwfencing.org

[EddyStreet]

Originally Posted by darius

NORTHWEST FENCING CENTER
2009 Advanced Foil Camp
July 26th – August 1st

Objective:

This camp's objective is to provide a superior fencing environment with an emphasis on competitive bouting (both team and individual) and technical and tactical skills. Athletes will be grouped by skill levels, and will receive both group and individual instruction.

There will be two camp sessions each day with optional evening bouting. In addition, camp will include a day-trip to an Oregon tourist site, two scheduled evening activities (such as paintball, lasertag or a swing dance night) and the River Run Foil tournament on August 1st. There will also be an optional whitewater rafting trip on the White Salmon River on August 2nd.

Coaching Staff:

Michael Marx earned his Master of Arms degree in Poland in 1992. Michael is a five-time Olympian and the only male fencer in the last 50 years to make the U.S. Olympic team in two weapons: foil and epee. He is a five-time USOC Athlete of the year and earned a record eight U.S. national championships in foil. He has coached the 1997-2003 Junior, Cadet and Senior World Championship teams and has had students on four of the previous Olympic teams. He has been inducted into both the USFA and Oregon Sports Hall of fame.

Buckie Leach – Fencing Master. He has served as both national and Olympic coach; his students have won World Cups and World Championships.

Thomas Theuerkauff -- Fencing Master, Medoc Fencing Club, France

Simon Abram -- Fencing Master, ASPTT Aix en Provence, France

Darius Wei – Darius is a former coach at the University of Rochester and now a coach at the NWFC. He has nationally ranked students in both men’s and women’s foil.

Cost :

The camp fee is $680, which includes camp, home stay (for campers under age 21), meals and NWFC-scheduled evening activities. If housing is not needed, the cost is $580. A nonrefundable $50 deposit is required to register; the balance of the camp fee is due upon arrival. The white water raft trip is optional and an additional $85.00.

Housing :

A limited amount of housing is available with NWFC families. Housing is provided on a first-come basis, based on date of receipt of registration form and deposit. No housing requests will be accepted after July 10th. Home stay campers will be met at the airport or train station. Please schedule your arrival no later than 7:00pm.

Registration forms can be downloaded at nwfencing.org

What is the expectaion of the level of the campers?

[EddyStreet]

What's the expectation of the level of the campers?

[passata_sotto]

Originally Posted by EddyStreet

What's the expectation of the level of the campers?

This is the tournament at the end of the camp from last year:

http://askfred.net/Results/results.p...nament_id=6285

As you can see, with 35 fencers. 10 of them were "A"s. The majority of fencers are also campers, whether from NWFC or other clubs. My youngest son loves this camp - could not fence in the tournament last year because of age but, since the tournament is on 1 August, gets to fence in his first open there this year We have already signed up.
The camp has excellent instruction (look at the list of coaches) and super extra curricular activites such as paint ball and barbeques - great way to meet other fencers.

Of course, especially with the economy, no one can guarantee who will sign up.

[darius]

What's the expectation of the level of the campers?

I seem to recall when we split As/Bs and everybody else, they were about equal, but there were some pretty young kids there. The expectation is that everybody comes to train hard and have a good time.

darius

[epeeslasher]

Can you extrapolate some more about how this camp is run? What kind of things will you emphasize the participants learn and will this differ based on how the groups are split up?

[darius]

You can expect to see several things:

Bouting often takes place in ladder-type formats; there'll be several pools, and when you fence a pool, the two winners move up, two bottoms move down, and middle fencers stay in place. That's not set in stone by any means; we change the bouting formats based on what makes sense and will play with a lot of different types of bouting (win by 3, specific situations, taking away actions, have to score on certain actions, and so on)

When we group people for instructional segments, we usually do it by skill level, and then those groups rotate around -- one will go to do Buckie stuff, one will do Michael stuff, and so on, with a switch after a set amount of time. That way the coaches can tailor the instruction towards what the group is capable of doing.

We don't do many private lessons in camp. The reasoning behind that is we feel that we don't want to mess with what campers' private coaches teach. Instead, we'd rather do small-group work, and give them processes and ideas they can take home; teaching them to fish, as it were. We occasionally do assessment-type lessons occasionally to help the fencers figure out what to work on, but usually that can be discerned through watching a few bouts.

On the last day, when the campers are tired, we usually do developmental/coordination exercises with them.

Also, nationally ranked fencers (and any coaches who would like to see/participate) are invited to come an hour before camp starts each day to work in a small group with the coaching staff.

Beyond this, we're attempting to make this an active coaching seminar too; the coaching staff will spend some time in the evenings discussing the whats and whys of our methods with any fencing coaches or trainees.

We work REALLY hard to make sure the advanced camps are as camper-friendly as they can be. If you have any other questions, feel free to respond to this thread, or PM or email me (darius@nwfencing.org)

darius