Marketing and fencing

[sabreur]

Originally posted by Wizardly
Calling fencing esoteric is like calling baseball esoteric because only a few hundred guys in the country understand the nuance of hitting a major league pitch.

Actually, there are probably many thousands of people who understand the nuance of hitting a major league pitch--there are only a couple hundred who can do it.

I stand by my statements that fencing is esoteric, and it takes a long time to learn to do it.

Yeah, you can explain it in ten minutes (I've narrated "get to know fencing" events). But if you want to get good at it, you have to spend a lot of time at it. Claiming that people can learn and somehow take much satisfaction from the sport based on an hour a week's training is BS--you're BSing the beginners, you're BSing yourself, and you're BSing the sport.

I took an extended vacation from fencing and played squash for fifteen years. Squash is similar--you have to spend a fair amount of time (a couple of years) learning the sport before you get reasonably good at it. Racketball took off in the US and replaced handball, at the same time squash was booming in other parts of the world. Why? Because racketball is really easy to play, even if you've never played before. A couple of beginners can go on the court and bang the ball around and have a great time. Squash, you have to learn, and it takes time. Handball, you have to learn, and it takes time, and it hurts until your hands get used to it. Racketball just happens to be played on a handball court, which the US had great numbers of, and no one else in the world had ever seen, so racketball takes off in the US and squash has a boom, now past, in the rest of the world.

When people asked me what the biggest difference between racketball and squash was, I used to say, "The better you get in racketball, the shorter the rallies become. The better you get in squash, the longer the rallies become."

The point is that different sports have learning curves that are different shapes--some sports, like squash and fencing, the initial shape of the curve (let's call it capability versus time) is very flat--ie., it takes a lot of time and practice to achieve much capability. Eventually, the curve become steeper, and you develop capability more quickly. Other sports, the curve starts quite steeply--you can develop a lot of capability quite quckly--at some point, the curve begins to flatten out and achieving the next increment of capability becomes much more difficult.

If you go around claiming fencing is either easy to learn or easy to understand, you are misleading yourself about the shape of the curve, and about the nature of the game.

And although I am no classicist, I would venture to say that fencing still has something of life and death about, something fundamentally serious. It is not a "lifestyle" sport, like tennis or golf (thank god). It is a "way of life" sport. If you want to sell it, then you should sell it for what it is.

MR

[Wizardly]

Again, what kind of capability are you expecting out of "decent" fencers? What qualifies someone as a "decent" fencer?

What I'm saying is that if you're not expecting to make it to the international circuit, you don't need to spend the two lifetimes. 17000 people fence competetively, 100000 more people just fence. There are a only a very few "decent" MLB ballplayers. That doesn't stop millions of kids from playing t-ball. That doesn't stop a bunch of 30 year olds from playing softball on a weekend.

I'm also saying that the learning curve for a sport is more dependent on the individual and the coach rather than the nature of the sport itself. How the action evolves with the level of skill really isn't relevant to learning the skill.

Saying that fencing is, by its very nature, difficult to learn is not accurate. Any idiot can pick up a stick and poke someone and have fun (just like any 5 year old can hit a ball off a batting tee). It's not as though any particular movement is so difficult to learn that it takes years of study. It wont take 2 lifetimes to do any particular movement well.

What is more accurate to say is that there is a lot that can potentially be learned. There are a lot of movements you can learn, there are a lot of ways to improve upon movements, and because there are a lot of movemens, there are a lot of responses to learn. There are a lot of levels on which to understand and appreciate the actions. (Not all sports have the same maximum absolute skill level to learn.)

Yes, it takes a long time to learn to become an expert in the sport, to compete at an inernational level, to go to tournaments and exect to win any given bout. But it's a mistake to recruit novice fencers JUST for that purpose. Just like it would be a mistake to reject all those millions of kids and casual players saying "if you don't have major league aspirations, don't play the game." It's wrong to expect someone understand EVERYTHING about the sport...and it's perfectly accurate to say that it's easy to appreciate SOMETHING in the sport.

Fencing is different things to different people. It's esoteric to some, some enjoy being a rarity, some enjoy that there isn't any serious athletic talent in their area to contend with, some find it rewarding to go to the World Cup, and some people just enjoy going to the club for 1 hour a week and fencing. It may be difficult for some to learn, it may be easy for others. BS is telling people that they can't take satisfaction in 1 hour a week. It's BSing the beginners, it's BSing yourself, and it drives people away from the sport.

A sport's popularity is not based on its ease of play. Epee is easy to play - pick up a stick and poke someone. Baseball, basketball, and football and gymnastics are not easy to play. I think it is more accurate to relate popularity to opportunities to participate. Why scare people away from participating by telling them that they have to shape their life around the sport to even hope to become "decent?"

[Inquartata]

Uh, now you're just hurting your own argument.

Fencing is easy, basketball ( for instance ) is hard?!

Using your logic, basketball is "just" picking up a ball and flinging it at a hoop. Meanwhile fencing is a compendium of complex, multidimensional actions which have to be performed all at once: feet and hands must sometimes go opposite directions, etc....

You can't separate out a single action ( from either sport ), say "It's easy" in isolation, and then extrapolate that the SPORT is easy. It's the gestalt that counts, not how well you can perform one tiny part alone. And it's the gestalt that takes years to master.

[Wizardly]

I don't think I composed that part of the argument very well. The point was that if epee, in it's simplest form (pick up a stick and poke someone) is easy, and for some people, that's all that's required for it to be fun and rewarding. (Nice attempt at straw-man...that was NOT "my logic.")

However, you also didn't catch the point, Inq. Contrary to your belief, I am NOT committing a fallacy of composition. What I am instead pointing out is that a lifetime of practice isn't required perfecting any given action before it can be used and enjoyed. You're right (though not gestalt as I understand the term), that putting it all together effectively takes a long time to master. In fact, I implied as much with the whole paragraph of "lots." However, mastery isn't necessary to enjoy the sport. It's a mistake to present fencing in that light.

[Inquartata]

Originally posted by Wizardly

However, you also didn't catch the point, Inq.

What did you expect, I'm an edge man!