Fencing in Britain

[annacattiva]

Hi,
I'm looking at going to grad school at the University of Warwick in Coventry, and I'm wondering what kind of fencing there is around there. I'm a (women's) sabre fencer, been fencing for 4 years, I want to stay competitive if at all possible. Any suggestions? I know that the university has a fencing club, but they don't have any women's sabre and it really looks like they are a primarily pointy-weapon club with a few people who also whack people upon occasion.

[Dave]

The warwick uni fencing club website is rather out of date now (I know the guy who wrote it and he hasn't been there for a while). Since then womens sabre will have been introduced.

British universities have an sports league system known as BUSA (www.busa.ac.uk) which has teams from different universities competing against each other every wednesday afternoon. For fencing this is team matches (3 weapons italian relay highest cumulative score wins). IIRC Warick has a womens team who I am sure will be pleased to have you.

Away from the university competitions there are competitions every weekend throughout the country.

Have a look at www.britishfencing.com for club and competition listings.

You may also want to have a look at the UK fencing forum fencingforum.com some one from warwick may post there.

[annacattiva]

Thanks!

Anna

[Boo Boo]

This may be too late - or not possible - but if you have any wider choice of University in the UK, you may want to consider Durham or one in London - both of which are better for sabreurs...

When are you coming over? If you want to stay competitive, try and fit some "Open" competitions whilst you are in the country. Open competitions vary in entry numbers and standard, but the tougher ones are our nearest equivalent to NACs. A competition caledar can be found at http://www.britishfencing.com/calendar20034.html

If you post on fencingforum.com you should get a lot of help and advice - about clubs ad competitions etc...

Good luck
Boo

[annacattiva]

Oh, it's not too late at all for me to change my mind about things. I've started applying to grad school, but I'm not planning to go until at least Fall 2005. I'll need the time to get scholarships and things like that, and I'll want to have it to keep fencing here...

My field is translation studies, which is rather limited. In particular, literary translation, which means that I wind up with not-so-many choices for graduate school (which is why I'm applying to school in Britain in the first place- there aren't too many schools in the U.S. that offer what I want either). I'll poke around a bit more, though, and see what I can come up with near Durham or London.

Thanks for the advice! I'll try out fencingforum.com when I get a little closer to going; that is, when I've decided what school I'm going to and need to choose a club. In the meantime, thanks for the links and the suggestions.

[Boo Boo]

No problem

I guess that choice of location of school depends on how competitive you want to be - the Durham area or London certainly give you better clubs within easy reach. Although, if you are really competitive, you may want to consider elsewhere in European (depending on the language your studies are based around...)

Have fun choosing a college and course and I hope that you join the fnecingforum and the UK soon

Boo