Starting a High School Fencing Club

[fencingfish]

Anyone have any experience in convincing
a baseball, football, basketball high
school that a fencing club is a good
alternative sport? Any ideas?
Administration like US news media
just does not want to recognize our sport.

[Mergs]

There are a couple of ways to approach this. First, if you are not already a faculty member, find a sponsor. Second, appeal to the Title XI aspect i.e. start off as a girls/womens varsity team and OBTW a mens club to go along with it. Next collect as many brochures from colleges/universities that offer fencing scholarships and finally appeal to the coaches of the other sports as this being an alternative for those atheletes that may not be the first or second string guys that'll get a chance to get much playing time, but are overall deserving of a chance to get a scholarship in another sport. Finally, put on a demonstration at your school and get signatures from students that say they would be interested in fencing.

Having said all that, you have to approach the administration with a well thought out plan for establishing, running, funding and growing the program. Using a business plan format would be a good way of doing that.

Good luck.

[Fencing Mom]

The last two issues of American Fencing had an informative article by Cindy Bent on the subject.

[Purple Fencer]

Keep in mind you'll ALSO have to explain the sport to people who WILL panic when they realize our sport involves hitting each other with 36" of steel on a regular basis!

[graham]

Cross training.

Try to get some of the other coaches onside. Fencing can be a good crosstraining sport for other sports, especially basketball. The agility and movement involved can be quite good for complete development of an athlete.

I was just told at the club this evening of an article in a recent issue of Sports Illustrated. I haven't read it, but apparently fencing is being used by a German basketball star, now playing in the NBA, to improve his mobility, etc.

I don't usually buy SI, but will go out tomorrow to pick it up and check for the article.

GT

[Saber Girl]

My shcool offers a different martial art for 7th and 8th graders. Last year I was in Aikido, this year I am in Judo. Two of my friends took fencing at their school.

[fencingfish]

I'm really amazed he (my son) is getting so much
resistance. I can understand how it would scare
an administration to give blades to a bunch of teenagers.

Now I was lost with this,
"Second, appeal to the Title XI aspect
i.e. start off as a girls/womens
varsity team and OBTW a mens club to
go along with it".

What is Title XI and what is a OBTW?

[epeemike81]

Originally posted by fencingfish
Now I was lost with this,
"Second, appeal to the Title XI aspect
i.e. start off as a girls/womens
varsity team and OBTW a mens club to
go along with it".

What is Title XI and what is a OBTW?

He meant Title IX, not Title XI. For a rather detailed discussion of title IX, check out the thread entitled "female equility" (sic).

Also, OBTW - Oh, By The Way.

-m

[Triton]

I'm a high school teacher, and we just started a fencing club, but it happened more by accident than design...

I was teaching some basic sabre fencing moves to actors preparing for a play that involved some stage combat. I figured they should at least know what it looked like to really try to hit somebody, and then later show them how to not hit them on stage. As we practiced (using equipment borrowed from other fencers I know) more and more students showed up just to learn fencing itself. The play is long over now, and the fencers have kept going. We put on a demonstration "mini-tournament" amongst ourselves for the students and staff to see last spring, and wrote letters to the principal and school board to request official status as a club. (It also helped that a few of the kids learning to fence had parents on that board.) We are now an official extra-curricular activity for the school with about 20 members. We don't get any money from the school to support this, but we're working on that.

[fencingfish]

You guys are great, thank you.
I think our next plan of action will be to
work with the information meetings they will
have during intramurals in January.

If my son can get enought of the student body
involved, at least 50 students, I think email
would be the way to go. Drown administration
in requests for a club. For some reason they
think that as soon as they start a club, they
will have to compete. Add that to the thinking
that fencing is just a winter sport, he'll be
junior before anything (if anything) can happen.

The last word we got was that space was a premium.
My property tax bill says otherwise. The school
just got a $2 million addition finished.

Very frustrating. Thanks for your help.

What is the best way to find out which colleges have fencing scholarships?

thanks

[fencingfish]

You guys have been so nice answering my questions I thought I would update you on where we were at.
It's been an uphill stuggle. Finals come along and everything seems to shut down. Our park district coach is talking with a teacher about setting up a demo where three of us would come in with my son and do a demo to get interest going.
Hopefully we can get it going before he's a junior.

fencingfish: