Fencing.Net - Your Guide to Fencing & Fencing Equipment

Ariela · 06-06-2003, 11:28 PM

ive always wondered that ! specially cause ive met so many fencers so young lately , that i , in my reallity cant imagine how some ppl got to start fencing by the age of 12 ! i mean , when i was twelve i didnt even know what fencing was . its not an overated sport like football or voleyball !

KBayDog · 06-06-2003, 11:34 PM

In all honesty, I simply do not know. Just seemed like something to do at the time! No parental influence, no college team...just a passing interest.

That grew on me, like a fungus.

Of course, I started at the ripe old age of 24...which, as a matter of fact, I am now...

Ariela · 06-06-2003, 11:46 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by KBayDog
In all honesty, I simply do not know. Just seemed like something to do at the time! No parental influence, no college team...just a passing interest.

That grew on me, like a fungus.

Of course, I started at the ripe old age of 24...which, as a matter of fact, I am now...

well i was actually thinking of you when i posted that ....i always liked to play sword fight with my younger bro but i dont think id ever even get to know what fencing was if it wasnt for maiden

KBayDog · 06-06-2003, 11:54 PM

True. I knew what it was, and I knew Bruce did it, but I never put 2 and 2 together.

Glad I did, though!

d0gz|song · 06-06-2003, 11:58 PM

I started to fence when I was twelve. I had been wanting to fence for a year before I finally found a fencing class near me. Funny thing was, I already new all the background info about fencing before I took my first lesson...

Ariela · 06-07-2003, 12:14 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by KBayDog
True. I knew what it was, and I knew Bruce did it, but I never put 2 and 2 together.

Glad I did, though!

i got to know what fencing was around the age of 14 but then i moved to the US and i met this girl who used to take fencing classes where she lived before moving to tennesse . i got very interested in fencing but since i didnt drive back then i thought it was totally out of hand for me to attend fencing classes , then some years later i moved back to brazil , and while working at this factory i met this lift truck operator who played volleyball .... he convined me to quit smoking thru sports .,... i tried a few sports which i didnt like all that much to really work on them untill one day when listening to maiden in my room , something came into my mind "fencing ! why not ?! ive always wanted to be a fencer ! thats my sport ! "

Ariela · 06-07-2003, 12:16 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by d0gz|song
I started to fence when I was twelve. I had been wanting to fence for a year before I finally found a fencing class near me. Funny thing was, I already new all the background info about fencing before I took my first lesson...

but what made you interested in fencing , tho ?! also fencing is not a sport which youll see on the news evyday .... how did you get to know it ?

ShaggyShaw · 06-07-2003, 12:20 AM

My lil bro went on a rantage about how he had always wanted to fence and about this was absolutely the sport for him and he had to do it and he would do it forever and never stop for anything.

He made my mom find the local club, he joined, my mom said there were some cute girls there. So I went, little did I know what I was getting myself into. started with foil, moved to sabre, got good in that and stuck with it untill 7 months ago I picked up an epee... then it became an addiction.

btw, my bro stopped a month after I started...

westcoastsabre · 06-07-2003, 12:34 AM

Me pop fenced, I poked my friends with sticks and always one, so it was a natural next step for me. Though before I used a foil I thought it was the most flexible thing on the face of the earth. Little did I know how right I was.

PeterGustafsson · 06-07-2003, 01:40 AM

Hi!

Saw an ad for a beginner´s class in the weekly page of the sports club of the University in my 3rd year there. Started with epee (as everyone else), and found out that I like fencing, and defending while I wait for the other guy to make a mistake that I could use. Been loving it since then.

My younger son (2 years)loves to hold my sabre, and "fences" me with spoons and any other kitchen utensil he can get his hands on. Maybe a recruit there later on.

Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

whtouche · 06-07-2003, 03:48 AM

My club is run out of two highschools in the area. It had already been established at one, lasalle academy in providence. The coach used to teach there, and his wife, also a teacher, taught at my highschool - bishop feehan highschool, she was my math teacher my sophomore year, the year before I got into fencing. He asked her if there was any interest in the sport. She asked some of her students, one of whom was my girlfriend at the time. She asked me if I was interested, I'd always been interested in martial arts, and in competitive sports, it seemed perfect. I was right.

We went to a tournament to watch, and shortly thereafter people from lasalle started coming to feehan to help run practices and teach us the basics and it took off from there. I was captain last year, my senior year, I just finished my freshman year in college and am more of a serious competitior than ever.

Seems like a kindof circuitous route to take, and I'm very glad it happened.

Ramrod · 06-07-2003, 09:36 AM

My wife saw classes being offered at a local community college and suggested that my son & I go since whe took dance classes on the same night.

I had wanted to learn for some time but never found classes conveniently located.

Then I found out you could compete and just got hooked. It's kinda like a bad habit, I started out casually and now I just can't stop. At least it's a healthy habit.

NJP3 · 06-07-2003, 09:42 AM

My dads a doctor and one of his patients was like hey do your kids want to try fencing ( they were starting a small club). I said sure why not. And, well you know the rest...

jeff · 06-07-2003, 01:56 PM

My high school had a strong fencing team (always in the top 2 to 4 in New York), and did annual demonstrations for recruits. I had been looking for a sport to get into, and this looked great. One of the best choices I ever made in my life.

***Craig*** · 06-07-2003, 02:11 PM

Back in the day McDonalds would run a contest/promotion around the Olympic Games where you every time you bought something (I think it was fries and cokes), you got a peel off game piece that had the name of some Olympic sport. If the US team got a medal, you got a free food item or prize depending on the medal.

One of the pieces that I got was "fencing" (forget which event). I either knew or figured out what the sport was, so that had me looking out for "fencing" in the Olympic results.

Fast forward a few days.

There was a short clip of a fencing bout and mention of the Bronze medal win by Peter Westbrook. Don't remember if this got me the prize or not, but I did see about 15 seconds of Westbrook fencing and thought "wow, that's cool!"

Since I had already been trying out just about every sport in my local area, I looked in the phone book, saw that there was a fencing club in Alanta (the Atlanta Fencers' Club), and got information on a beginners' class that was going to start in a couple of weeks.

I got hooked during the beginners class and have been involved in the sport in some way ever since.

Cheers,
Craig
Addicted since 1984

rvergara · 06-07-2003, 04:25 PM

actually i started on a dear of a friend of mine the first day of college. i loved it since the first minute and i havent stopped fencing since. my friend got into it too, and we put together the college club along with our coach.
before us, fencing was an extracurricular like pottery

wflaschka · 06-07-2003, 04:39 PM

I started in 5th grade; I liked swinging sticks around like swords, and (I think) had a D&D fixation going. My dad took me to a fencing class, where the coach, Yvonne Gallego, allowed me to join. She made me promise to act mature and responsible, given that everybody else was in college.

And I haven't stopped since! Except for once after college for a few years, burn-out. I just cut-and-pasted all my posts on fencing.net, they come out to 57 pages. I'm spending waay too much time even just talking about the sport. So apparently I'm still in love with fencing.

Inquartata · 06-07-2003, 07:42 PM

Well, I didn't start fencing until I got to college at 24, but I WOULD have started a lot younger had I been able to FIND any fencers or a club. Movies are what first piqued my interest in fencing per se, though I've been interested in swords and swordplay generally for as long as I can remember---one of my earliest memories is of cajoling a welder friend of my father into torching out a crude one-piece Greek shortsword out of 1/8" steel plate, and laboriously adding a grip, and even more laboriously sharpening the thing by grinding it on the concrete sidewalk of our house...

Of course, when I started reading the interest shaped my choices of literature...which further fuelled the obsession.

OK, technically I took my first fencing lesson when I was 20, in the Army, but that was only foil and I don't count that. I signed up for a fencing class in college, which again was foil only, but the teacher let slip that there was a club on campus so I scurried over there quick like a bunny and to the question of "May I help you?" from the coach there I replied, "Yes, you can teach me sabre"! And I have been at it ever since...

Sabresque · 06-07-2003, 07:55 PM

Actually, I started fencing because of something pretty stupid. I was doing some high-school filming project with a friend, and we got lost (which is pretty near impossible in our town) while trying to find the greenbelt. We ended up on the side of this tiny shopping centre, where a small fencing club was. I saw the swords in the window and thought it looked kinda cool, so I bugged my parents about it. then, vwala, I took a beggining class and found out I was pretty natural at it. After that I fenced foil for about a year and a few weeks, before my new and better coach told me "you have strong legs, you sabre" (great reason, I know

). So, I tried sabre, and within six months I had already gotten good results in tournaments. So, here I am now, happy as a clown (er, well, except for that little injury), still doing sabre.

I did, of course, like most people, fight "swords" with sticks in younger years. (You know what's really good for that? The handle part of croque mallots unscrewed from the mallot part

)

Jupiter · 06-07-2003, 07:56 PM

i was taking ballet and thought it was sort of okay, but sort of boring and didn't meet my needs as well as the realization that a person in their 20's [me] would get NOWHERE in ballet, but possibly I could achieve some small personal success with fencing. To me fencing was an achieveable thing. I saw an ad in the paper for a new semester starting and drove immediately there to find about 30 - 40 people seriously involved in a great great sport, I only stopped for career or business and have only recently returned to the sport after a 10 year absence. In coming back to my orginal roots of fencing, I am so pleased to see that many of my first fencing buddies are still at the salle and we just round robbined the other day. It is a great feeling.