Mesa Legend - SPORTS - En garde! Fencing class gives MCC students an opportunity to try something different

December 6, 2005
SPORTS
En garde!
Fencing class gives MCC students an opportunity to try something different

Danny Wenger
Mesa Legend

“One day I saw a kid walking the halls with a foil and a mask and I was like, ‘I’ve got to find out where he got that.’”
That was how Randall Harding said his love for fencing first started. Harding is a student at MCC and has been fencing there for three years.
Harding said he was always interested in sword fighting, but was unaware that MCC offered a fencing class.
“It’s not just an average sport you play on the street,” said Patrick Wheeler. “There are certain training requirements and certain equipment requirements. It’s not like basketball.”
Wheeler is one of the fencing instructors at MCC. He has been teaching fencing for about two years.
Besides needing certain training and equipment, Wheeler said that people don’t know about fencing because it’s not a “very visible sport.”
“Even on the Olympic level, it’s one of the sports that has been in every modern games since it started,” Wheeler said. “But even to this day it doesn’t get a whole lot of television coverage. I think part of that is people aren’t familiar with it so they don’t know how to watch it.”
Fencing consists of three rounds; each round is three minutes long. The first fencer to 15 points, or the fencer with more points at the end of the third round, wins the bout.
Scoring in fencing depends on which type of sword you use. The three swords are the foil, epee and saber.
The foil is a light weapon with a thin blade. Points are scored with the foil by landing the tip of the blade on valid target. Valid target for foil is the front torso, from the waist up, or the back, from the waist up. Arms, neck, head, and legs are not considered valid target.
The epee is like the foil but with a thicker blade. The epee is heavier than the foil but has a larger scoring area. Valid target for the epee is the entire body, including feet, hands and the head. Like the foil, the epee requires that only the tip of the blade touches. Foil and epee are not used for slashing.
The saber can score with the point and the edge. The blade is thin like a foil’s, but sturdier. Valid target for the foil is anything above the waist.
“My preferred weapon is foil,” Harding said. “But I started liking epee last semester.”
Harding said he preferred foil because he had been practicing with it the longest. However, Harding commented that epee involved more strategy.
“Epee, you can hit them anywhere from head to foot,” Harding said. “It’s really fun to hit people in the knee.”
“Love the saber,” said Cliff Curry. “Saber is a cut-and-slash weapon as well as point on. It looks a lot more like sword fighting in movies.”
Curry has been taking fencing at MCC for four years. He said movies sparked his interest in the sport.
“I love movies with sword fighting, craziness and general tomfoolery,” Curry said, “and I thought, ‘Hey, I ought to learn how to sword fight.’”
Curry said when he started the class, he quickly found that fencing was different from what he saw in movies. To him, real fencing was much better.
“Sword fighting you see in movies is done so that people look cool,” Curry said. “Fencing is done so that with a minimal amount of effort, and the most finesse, you score the point.”
To Wheeler, fencing is a unique sport because “there is no one dominance to it.”
“It’s a great equalizer because there’s such a great diversity in the range of fencers,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler said since there is so many styles to fencing, things like size don’t present advantages. Wheeler also said age doesn’t matter.
“We’ve got 18-year-old fencers and 50-year-old fencers and they enjoy fencing each other,” he said.
“It’s chess, it’s all thought,” Curry said. “Every opponent will be different, every bout will be different, and every time you pick up the foil you can still get stabbed.”
Curry also said fencing is good for staying in shape. Along with fitness, Curry said it helps people to build confidence.
“Once you stop fearing a person in gear with a foil, you stop fearing people on the streets,” Curry said. “The more confident you are in yourself, the better you are in life.”