Hypothetical situation - would it get publicity to fencing?

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

We all know that fencing gets too little publicity, but do you think that that would change if the scenario described below would happen? Note: it is entirely the figment of my imagination, it is not based - even loosely - on any real events.

Background
There are two universities (A and B) closeby, and they have had a rivalry going for decades. This rivalry shows itself in, among other places, the numerous sporting events where the two Universities compete against each other thoughout the scholastic year. These are often hard-fought and close affairs, and on the aggregate, each of them tend to win similar numbers of events.

This year, however, this is different. University A has had a dismal year, due to bad freshmen, lots of graduations, and an incredible string of rotten luck. With only one intermural event to go, Uni. A has lost *all* events so far. To add insult to injury, the not only lost, but were routed, in American football and basketball.

Fencing
There is only one traditional intermural event left - ME team. This event has in previous years been a thing strictly for the fencers themselves, very few other have come to watch. This time it is University A that hosts, and a trickling of non-fencers have showed up to see if the home team can get at least something right. Among them is a writer for the University paper. According to coaches, University B is the favorite, but if the lead of A fences to the outmost of his ability and the two others don´t crumble, an A win is at least possible.

From the beginning, things are going according to plan for the A team. Their 2nd and 3rd are not dropping too many points, and their lead have kept the team ahead. That is until the end of his 2nd bout. His ACL goes, he is in agony, and the total loss seems to be done. The replacement gets on to fight out the last 10 seconds of that bout, and no hits are scored. The two other actually manage to conserve the lead until the last bout.

When the A replacement is going to bout the B lead, the score is 40-38 for team A, but everyone expects that to change in short order. Sure enough, the B lead quickly gets an easy point. Then something happens. The A replacement starts to fence way out of his league, and manages to stall defensively. This goes on, and on, and on. With 30 seconds to go, the B lead thows all caution aside and finally gets his offensive working. He pushes the A replacement to the end line, but the latter is really psyched up by now. The B lead manages to push the A replacement partway of the endline, but when the buzzer goes, his front foot is still standing on the line. The entire A team collapses in a screaming pile.

Now, if such a scenario would not get fencing attention at least intramurally, then nothing will. So, my question is: *How* much attention would this get fencing at the Universities which you have attended?

Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[JEC]

Peter,

Duke and UNC are 11 miles from each other. Both have storied basketball teams. For the past few years, there is a cup, in which, every varsity sport (including fencing) earns some points ...
This year Woman's Golf was the clincher for Duke (sorry Craig)

http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/main/4615.html

[Wizardly]

0. None a tall. Not one bit of attention. Then again, I went to a Big 11 (Ten) school. You may have heard of it; legend has it our disbanded fencing team set fire to the football field. We didn't really have a team; more like a few interested individuals and a few more curious ones. Besides, the order in which people cared about things (multimillion dollar sports like football and basketball, intramural sports like underwater hockey, getting drunk on the weekend, whether the mascot is racist, student government election scandals). I'm optimistic, but I don't expect fencing to be celebrated while everyone else in the world is standing on their own soapbox screaming for everyone's attention at the same time.

I will say this however. Curling was aired on national television nto too long ago. There were even commercials for the national curling association. Where's our USFA commerical? Where's the press release of team USA beating out team Slovakia in a 2003 regualr season duel meet (instead of a tournament, like the regular major league season)? What about the Durham Bulls fencing team results in the last NAC?

[Wizardly]

I'm wondering what you think of this idea...would this help fencing at all?...some sort of localization and teams. Say, at the divisional level. In August, divisions make some sort of selection criteria, a tournament, past finishes in national meets, etc... and put together a "team" for all six weapons. Perhaps 5 people for each weapon and a captain/coach or some means of deciding which 3 of the 5 get's to fence at each event. This represents their division at meets within teh section (Illinois versus Wisconsin, for example), then fences a teams from outside the section. Basically, the idea is to set up some kind of local identity and local pride in the fencers within the division. Maybe we could even have a superbowl?

:::Puts on flame resistant suit:::
Let 'er rip!

[ReverseLunge]

Why do you want fencing to be so popular for? Don't you think it's kind of cool the way it is? Exclusive.

[sabresamurai]

I think that it is cool that fencing is "exclusive" this is because if someone at school figures out that you fence they are like "man, you fence? that is soooo cool, fencing would be soooo fun" and then everyone knows in the whole school that you fence and how awesome it would be to become a fencer, just like yourself. whereas if everyone fenced it would be like"wow...you fence...so do i...along with every one else"

[lfortier]

Originally posted by sabresamurai
I think that it is cool that fencing is "exclusive" this is because if someone at school figures out that you fence they are like "man, you fence? that is soooo cool, fencing would be soooo fun" and then everyone knows in the whole school that you fence and how awesome it would be to become a fencer, just like yourself. whereas if everyone fenced it would be like"wow...you fence...so do i...along with every one else"

Exactly what I was thinking, and thats very true- problem is that when there's more publicity, it does tend to be less of an exclusive sport. Reminds me of the old saying, "You cant have your cake and eat it too."

[sabresamurai]

ya, i mean if everyone fenced it would just be a normal sport, like basketball. nobody would care and there would be a lot toougher competition and more expensive because of the popularity more fencing companies would come and raise all the prices for gear, but if you like being in popular sports and having everyone u know fence and be so popular that it gets to be like teeball, it is just what you do to your son/daughter, you enroll them in the sport like every other person in the world [usa at least ) and if u like it u continue it your whole life until u dont make a team because of better skilled players who would not be fencers because they would never have thought of it if their parents had not enrolled them in it since day one, like teeball, but that's just my opinion

[MyrddinsPrecint]

you're 13 and 14?

ah. your intrest in being exclusive makes sense.

wait till high school/college, when you notice that your high school and college spends more money a year on football(the american variety) than it does on certain academics? the football players get breaks if they have a game and homework due, the softball girls leave class early, etc. at my private school, there's sports recognition day, in which all the sports players can wear their sport's warmups or uniforms, all of them (including cheerleading, which is another club sport, VERY similar to fencing in ammount of funding/ammount of respect at our school) get advanced warning of when that day is. Fencers? we keep our club t-shirts in our lockers so that when that day comes? we're ready.

then you start to realize-- hey, if we were accepted as a real sport because we had more support and were better known, maybe THEN we could get school to pay the registration fee for that NAC we're going to, maybe we could get electric scoring equipment, maybe they'd put us on the athletic schedule like wrestling, soccer, and tennis!

fencing will always be cool because it involves hitting people. Martial Arts are really common, and people still think their cool and wish they had joined.

if fencing became bigger, there would be more competitions. you can decide what level a soccer player you are, and either join a youth league, or your high school team. or (a list of other options)-- if fencing got SO popular that tournaments were THAT much harder, there'd be more fencing, and more small events for the inexperienced....

hell, fencing HAS gotten bigger and harder recently- when i began 3 years ago, it was possible to qualify for national events by showing up to the right tournament. now there are too many youth ws fencers to do that...

but i can still find tournaments in which i can do well.

hrm- "well" is SUCH a relative term....

[R. Exnicios]

I agree that the need for Publicity is not as big of a deal as the FIE makes out of it but it would be nice to have a little publicity and more fencers and hopefully MORE MONEY.

Our program is a University club with very little funding and no PE program. Every year some obscure sport/club gets more money than us and we all scratch our heads and wonder what the.......

In past years it was clubs like the Yoga or Chess and Gaming. This year a new club has arrived and gets more money than fencing. One of the members is even on the national team.

Hold on to your hats. Tulane University now has a Dodgeball club. Yes, Dodgeball. Okay hold your jokes about Tulane for a minute. Apparently dodgeball is a sport and they have Olympic dreams as well. There is even a National Dodgeball Association. I would have never guessed!

[sabresamurai]

Originally posted by MyrddinsPrecint
you're 13 and 14?

ah. your intrest in being exclusive makes sense.

wait till high school/college, when you notice that your high school and college spends more money a year on football(the american variety) than it does on certain academics? the football players get breaks if they have a game and homework due, the softball girls leave class early, etc. at my private school, there's sports recognition day, in which all the sports players can wear their sport's warmups or uniforms, all of them (including cheerleading, which is another club sport, VERY similar to fencing in ammount of funding/ammount of respect at our school) get advanced warning of when that day is. Fencers? we keep our club t-shirts in our lockers so that when that day comes? we're ready.

then you start to realize-- hey, if we were accepted as a real sport because we had more support and were better known, maybe THEN we could get school to pay the registration fee for that NAC we're going to, maybe we could get electric scoring equipment, maybe they'd put us on the athletic schedule like wrestling, soccer, and tennis!

fencing will always be cool because it involves hitting people. Martial Arts are really common, and people still think their cool and wish they had joined.

if fencing became bigger, there would be more competitions. you can decide what level a soccer player you are, and either join a youth league, or your high school team. or (a list of other options)-- if fencing got SO popular that tournaments were THAT much harder, there'd be more fencing, and more small events for the inexperienced....

hell, fencing HAS gotten bigger and harder recently- when i began 3 years ago, it was possible to qualify for national events by showing up to the right tournament. now there are too many youth ws fencers to do that...

but i can still find tournaments in which i can do well.

hrm- "well" is SUCH a relative term....

man u are really lucky to have a highschool fencing team/club because mine doesnt have one

[MyrddinsPrecint]

Originally posted by sabresamurai
man u are really lucky to have a highschool fencing team/club because mine doesnt have one

yes, i am.

however, even private clubs would benifit from the ammount of publicity that private "popular sport" leagues get... better coaches, better paid coaches, etc etc etc....

and i understand that high school clubs and the annoyances involved are not often experienced, due to the fact that there are few high school clubs...

college clubs/teams? well, we have quite a few college fencers on here... even quite a few good ones... ask them what they feel about the fencing budget vs. the football budget....

(note: there are some benifits of a college having a CLUB team rather than being a NCAA team... certain high school fencers can talk to certain coaches about being on their fencing teams in college because certain college clubs are good fencing programs, but not necessarily under the same NCAA regulations... i suggest you look at the NCAA regulations, if just for a laugh at how insane they are for a sport that gets very little publicity... )

[lfortier]

[quote]Originally posted by MyrddinsPrecint
[b]yes, i am.

however, even private clubs would benifit from the ammount of publicity that private "popular sport" leagues get... better coaches, better paid coaches, etc etc etc....and i understand that high school clubs and the annoyances involved are not often experienced, due to the fact that there are few high school clubs...

Lack of high school clubs is also from the school districts losing tons of money- At my high school I'm going to this year, they cut out like over 4 courses and 3 sports, despite the fact that they had the highest attendance, but were deemed "surplus courses" by the Board of Education. Plus, there's liability that plays a just as big as a role- Many teenagers are still immature and cant get over having a sword in there hand, therefore, worrying about the "oooh, I'm going to poke/hit you with my sword into next week" thing would be a job and sport by itself.... Its still too bad most schools dont get to experience fencing, though.

[MyrddinsPrecint]

Originally posted by lfortier

Lack of high school clubs is also from the school districts losing tons of money- At my high school I'm going to this year, they cut out like over 4 courses and 3 sports, despite the fact that they had the highest attendance, but were deemed "surplus courses" by the Board of Education. Plus, there's liability that plays a just as big as a role- Many teenagers are still immature and cant get over having a sword in there hand, therefore, worrying about the "oooh, I'm going to poke/hit you with my sword into next week" thing would be a job and sport by itself.... Its still too bad most schools dont get to experience fencing, though.

we've had very few problems with it. kids have to start out with a footwork intense day before they can make it to getting to hold a blade. this has detered all but about two kids who just want to fool around. gnerally either i or one of the two coaches catch them if they look like they're doing something even sorta unsafe. they're kinda scared of me. they're very scared of the coaches. they don't do it again. if they do, they don't come back. oh, and the closet is locked at all times that aren't fencing practice as well...