Hi all. My son is writing a paper on competitive fencing and would like some additional info. Foremost, he'd like to know how many youth members (14 and under) there are in the USFA. If there is any other info on breakdown among weapons that would be great to, but he'd really like to find the number of currnet youth fencers (boys v girls, if available). Any assistance would be much appreciated.
Hi all. My son is writing a paper on competitive fencing and would like some additional info. Foremost, he'd like to know how many youth members (14 and under) there are in the USFA. If there is any other info on breakdown among weapons that would be great to, but he'd really like to find the number of currnet youth fencers (boys v girls, if available). Any assistance would be much appreciated.
This could be an interesting project not only for your son but also for the USFA leadership (assuming they are interested) and the rest of us who are curious about these things.
The link provided by the ancient one gives the USFA presentation which displays the data from the $ point of view, i.e., each different membership category has a certain membership fee, and the presentation gives the total numbers of each.
I don't think this is what your son is interested in, though it is obviously a starting point. I believe from your post your son wants to organize the data by competitive age category which would by the primary goal of any organization whose focus is developing fencing, not just collecting membership fees.
In my research in this area I found that the French gather and present their data in the most comprehensive and at least from my point of view interesting way, which I believe is your son's goal with his paper.
If you, or anyone else is interested in the French system and use it as a model to present our data (God forbid!) here are some useful docs. The sources are a presentation made by Jean-Pierre Mahé who was kind to share it with me and official French statistics.
FFE - evolution of age category licenses (1992/933 to 2009/10) excel summary translated in English from original doc (Jean-Pierre Mahé) FFE age stats.xls
Original excel spreadsheet with graphic presentation of data by Jean-Pierre MahéEvolution_licencies
If one is interested in comparing fencing in France to all other sports, here is a very detailed information going down to each region, ligue (our division), department (an administrative division of France--100 in total). The doc is in French. Click on tab olympiques but if you remember that escrime = fencing (fed code 110) you should be OK. All sports are listed in (French) alphabetical order. LicencesRepDetail08-4
Note
The FFE with about 60,000 members is the largest fencing federation in the world which reports its membership. One of the primary goals of the current FFE administration is to reach the target of 100,000 members by 2012. To reach this goal no efforts and expenses are spared which raises a lot of grumbling on the part of many.
For example, Paris 2010 Senior World Championships and related TV exposure and coverage which carried staggering costs were devised as means to the 100k members goal. At least so far the results appear to be dismal as compared with the investment made, and the hoped for rising tide of new members has not materialized. The French fencing community at large is not a happy camper now and the criticism of the current leadership is similar with what we have here with the USFA.
In terms of numbers, one comparison is quite interesting; between fencing and handisports, i.e., all sports for disabled combined, in France.
Like the FFE is for fencing, there is the FFH (French Federation of Handisport). In France,
fencing (FFE) about 60,000 members
handisports (FFH) 30,000 to 40,000 all sports combined
I will deal with wheelchair fencing as a separate issue since it is a very interesting topic.
Hope this is helpful to your son and/or anyone else.
I wonder what is the explanation for the licenses for "club owners" almost doubling in one year (2004 to 2005). Change in classification of who is or isn't a "club owner/cadre)? Or does this not mean what I think it means?
I wonder what is the explanation for the licenses for "club owners" almost doubling in one year (2004 to 2005). Change in classification of who is or isn't a "club owner/cadre)? Or does this not mean what I think it means?
A
Since I cannot read your mind I don't have a clue of what you may be thinking.
The category I translated as cadre/club owner is called in French (and in Italian) dirigeants (dirigenti). This is a category of people who own/manage clubs or are part of the power structure in the administration of departments, ligues, and regions, plus the cadre running the federation and various commissions members.
Keep in mind that the FFE (and the FIS) deals directly for administrative matters with the clubs, not the individual fencers, just like the FIE deals with the national federations, not the individual members. Furthermore, the president of a fencing club carries the legal liability of the club being and staying in business, hiring under specific contracts the certified Maitres d'arme (maestri) without whom a club could not be affiliated to the federation or operate. No club can have members who are not members of the federation. Some larger clubs may have more than just a president but also other people with administrative roles.
There are currently about 850 affiliated clubs in France. This gives you immediately just as many presidents and other cadre, plus the departments are run by people and so are ligues and regions. So the numbers seem to make sense.
I cannot explain the jump you identified in 2004 other than some reclassification of people considered cadre who before were not.
It is interesting to notice that the target for 2012 of 100,000 members and 1,000 affiliated clubs, which was set in 2007-8 by the current FFE President, seems to be more difficult to reach now after the big investment in the senior world championships of Paris 2010.
The most recent data for the beginning of January are
a loss of membership slightly less that 5% with respect to the same period a year ago
a loss of 10% with respect to 2008-9
an increase of about 3% with respect to 2007-2008
As of Dec 29, the FFE had 51,386 individual members.
On the left hand side are the individual licence fees (the four categories refer to Y-5 and under, Y-6 to Y-8, cadre, everyone else) and on the right hand side are the club affiliation fees (which vary depending on the number of members).
The conclusion for the time being is that the 2010 Senior World Championships with related TV exposure have not produced the hoped for bump in membership which follows for example a successful Olympics (for France escrime).
Furthermore, the TV coverage which was unprecedented in the case of fencing in France had an audience index which was extremely low. The mediatisation concept, so dear to Roch, did not work.
Until about three years ago, the USFA had membership data available for anybody to download. The data included birthdate along with division and section and names of members. I can tell you that the overwhelming majority of USFA members were under 24 years of age, and there were several geographical variations. I will look for the file, but probably it is in an older hard drive.
Originally Posted by Asibov Sobelo 
