Help - Fencing club threatened

[Dom C]

Hi,
My school fencing club has been threatened by the school Rackets club. They want to take other our gym to build more Rackets courts. We really need help and advice. We really enjoy our sport and have numerous good fencers. We would all like to continue but if they take our space there is nowhere else we could go except the school recently built a room for fencing but there is no run off except in to two floor to cieling mirrors. Any help you could give us would be much appreciated

[SJCFU#2]

You might try pointing out to the powers that be specifically why the new facility is not suitable for fencing.

[noodle]

sub-question: why did they build a room for the fencing club without consulting the fencing club?

[Dom C]

Noodle they did our coach told them we did not want the mirror but they said it had to be there for the other things that would also occasionally go in there(yoga etc.) so we asked coud they put it on the other walls and they refused. so the Fencing tudio as it is called cannot be used for fencing due to a health and safty risk.

[noodle]

Noodle they did our coach told them we did not want the mirror but they said it had to be there for the other things that would also occasionally go in there(yoga etc.) so we asked coud they put it on the other walls and they refused. so the Fencing tudio as it is called cannot be used for fencing due to a health and safty risk.

have you sat down with anyone and talked about this issue?

[Dom C]

We are having anouther interclub meeting tomorrow, we are hoping to get parents involved and I recently descovered an interesting fact: when they made there petition they took a photo to show how popular the club was well for this photo they just anyone who could, whether they played or not to go.

[Palisadeur]

...they took a photo to show how popular the club was well for this photo they just anyone who could, whether they played or not to go.

Didn't quite understand this, but read it as:
...they (the school) remarked about the photo that you could've (and thus insinuated that you did) grabbed random non-club member people and put them in uniforms to make the club look bigger.
Is this right? If so, I would be questioning their motives behind this opinion/distrust.

As for doing something about it, I second SJCFU#2 and noodle's comments. They should be step 1.
Try setting up a demonstration with a full length piste next to one that would fit in the "Fencing Studio" (include proper runoff at each end, just compress the duelling ground).
You may well find that, for training purposes, it can be made workable - my club has been in a WAY too small space for a while due to financial reasons, we simply can't afford to rent a bigger space yet. Which means that when we get to proper tournaments on full length pistes we feel we've got acres of room. Not the optimum, but like i said - workable.

Also, if members of your club have been winning competitions, make sure that they're reported in the school/local newspapers, which is good ammunition for fostering the club (administrating bodies are largely results driven I'm afraid).
Ask yourself what the Racquet Club are doing for the betterment of the school and try to outdo it!
Try to get the Fencing club more into the public forum of awareness, so that trying to sweep it into a corner is undesirable to the school.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

[K O'N]

Noodle they did our coach told them we did not want the mirror but they said it had to be there for the other things that would also occasionally go in there(yoga etc.) so we asked coud they put it on the other walls and they refused. so the Fencing tudio as it is called cannot be used for fencing due to a health and safty risk.

Are you a college student? Really, if you're going to make any part of your case in writing please try to use complete sentences.

First, meet with whoever is making the decisions, and take a roll sheet from your last semesters worth of meetings. Point out that lesser known sports like fencing are good things to develop an interest in in college, much better for you than sitting around watching football, for example. Your measure of success with the college is really how many students you get interested and active, competitive results are good for recruiting but may not be as important in impressing college officials. Or maybe they will, who knows.

Second, meet with all the other smaller sports on campus, if you can. A club sports council is very useful, it's like a union. It keeps you from getting squeezed out one at a time. The popularity of one sport or the other will wax and wane, but as a group you can all stick up for each other. When I was in college we had a fencing club, a gymnastics club, a judo club, a fighting kite club, I don't remember what. It was really useful to meet once a month, it became clear that the college was playing one of us against the other and trying to cut funding to club sports in favor of major sports like basketball. Once you know this you can all talk to the newspaper in the same way, and presto, you win.

K O'N

[Alastair]

Kent? Please, please don't be Tonbridge School.

Why does the other club need more space? Do you know if this has been approved by whoever allocates space yet?

Also, are any members of your club successful in competition? Competitive success adds to the reputation of the school if the school has backed them, so it may help to mention any such members.

[Dom C]

Yes we are Tonbridge. How did you guess/know?

A lot of us our sucessful in competitions but so are the rackets club people. We did award all the trophies/medals people had won in a recent prizegiving hopping to persuade the school.