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Welcome to the new season!
Firstly, thank you for a great 2022–23 season! August is a fine opportunity to enjoy a rest, get some active recovery away from the strip, or perhaps experience a great camp or two before the new season gets underway. Our community’s commitment to this sport never ceases to amaze; this last season we saw a record membership in USA Fencing, a record level of event entries, a record year for the U.S. Fencing Foundation and of course some amazing results in international competitions.
Speaking of, how about Eli Dershwitz OLY? Eli made history in Milan at the FIE Fencing World Championships, winning Team USA's first World Championship for Men’s Saber, and only our second men’s World Championship in history (joining Miles Chamley-Watson OLY who won Men’s Foil gold in 2013). Seeing that achievement in person was truly inspiring. Eli did not get an easy draw and on his way beat several of the world’s highest-ranked men's saber fencers. That gold was followed up by a first Men’s Team Saber medal for the USA with Eli as the anchor.
We also had success in foil where Lee Kiefer OLY medaled for the fifth consecutive time, and Nick Itkin OLY took home silver, his second year in a row with a medal. Both foil teams finished a close fourth to retain their Olympic qualifying position.
It was overall an excellent World Championship, and a big thanks to the entire cadre in Milan — there is a huge amount of work that goes into Team USA’s success which includes many of our community including the athletes not mentioned by name here as well as our coaches, sports medicine team, team leaders, media team and much more. A word too to Laura Decker who was selected as a referee for Milan in both saber and foil.
Our Parafencing team was also in action last month in Warsaw as the team continues its journey toward the 2024 Paris Paralympics. The team now looks ahead to the Sao Paulo Satellite Tournament in August.
Competition isn’t quite finished for the year as the FISU World University Games are currently underway in China where there is a large fencing delegation from the USA. (See live results here.) Beginning Aug. 14, our Pan Am Youth and Veteran teams will be in action in Uruguay for the 2023 Pan American Youth & Veteran Championship. Good luck to the large delegations involved in both!
Believe it or not, it’s been less than a month since Summer Nationals — and what an event! It was our largest Summer Nationals ever (by event registrations) and ran very smoothly. Despite the Phoenix heat we heard great feedback on the venue and hotel selections available as well as the competition itself. While there are too many results on the field of play to mention them all here, it’s a unique event around the world with an amount of fencers seen in no other nation. It’s a festival and celebration of our sport and one of the largest Olympic or Paralympic sporting events in the world. A huge thank you to all involved: athletes, coaches, parents, officials, armorers, replay, sports med providers, IT and more. I must give a big thank you our Events team here at USA Fencing, led by Glen Hollingsworth.
In other Events news, day schedules are out for our NAC series, and we’ve just confirmed our combined SJCC and Division I event in Richmond, Va., for December. We look forward to seeing you there. By the way, we know early December can be challenging for some which is why we moved the December NAC back to November. This event was primarily driven by the FIE calendar to allow Division I to have qualification opportunities.
And I should remind you that registration for the October 2023 NAC in Orlando and November 2023 NAC in Fort Worth are now open.
USA Fencing's amazing community has allowed us to build a non-endemic sponsor base for the first time this year. I want to take a moment to recognize some members of our community who have made connections to key individuals to help build fencing — much appreciated. You’ll see two more sponsors announced later this month, but we welcomed in this last few months Naked Wines, who are providing our parents and over 21 members with some outstanding wines at www.nakedwines.com/usafencing while we added Edge Spray just before Summer Nationals and hear that the community is enjoying both. This month we’ll be announcing a partnership with a school and a law firm. Your support of these sponsors is critical to retaining their support of USA Fencing, so please do try them!
Of course, there has been significant change, and this month sees some changes to our membership structure, club membership structure and the introduction of the Foundations of Fencing coaching certification program. We recognize that changing long-standing membership types is uncomfortable and, at times, downright frustrating. We also recognize that there are always ways to learn and improve, we ask our community to work with us as we launch our new Coaching Education program and work through the renewal season. If you need support, please reach out to information@usafencing.org and we’ll do our best to help. We’ve previously communicated the details of what we had planned and have really appreciated the feedback from membership which has allowed us to materially improve those programs.
I do want to address some of the questions and concerns that we’ve heard about some of the new programming. First on the Foundations of Fencing course. From the onset, the discussion with our coaching groups was focused on the importance of a program that covers both "how to coach" and "what to coach." The challenge then becomes how we can include that content in a coaching course that is concise yet provides the level of detail needed for current and new coaches.
We know asking folks to complete “mandatory” training is never popular (because this training is required to coach at a national tournament), but at this point having a minimum standard of coaching education is something expected of National Governing Bodies, particularly around minimum standards of safety. We have no desire to tell long-standing coaches how to teach our sport, but we do need to establish a minimum base. Going forward, coaches across the country will be able to offer their own CFEU (Continuing Fencing Education Units); to encourage the very thing that makes American fencing great: our diversity. Other applicable offerings include our speaker series and non-Fencing sports performance areas like nutrition, sports ethics, sports psychology. This program also helps define who is a “coach."
Please note that the "Creating a Culture of Belonging" module within the Coach Education program replaces the required Sexual Harassment Prevention training requirement for coaches at National Events.
We hear your feedback about needing time, and we thank the more than 400 coaches (around 25% of our total estimated coaching population) who have taken, or started, the course so far. We will extend that time to 90 days. Additionally, in an effort to ease this perceived burden, the modules are self-controlled so a coach can skim parts they feel proficient in so time on task is less than projected; a coach can watch a video in its entirety or decide one repetition of a given skill is sufficient for their understanding. The degree to which a coach immerses themselves in the module is up to the individual.
I do want to thank the experienced coaches and national coaches who were part of putting Foundations together, and point out that some coaches are exempt from Module 4 including NCAA current or former coaches, current or former National team coaches and other groups. We received a number of exemption requests and appreciate your patience as we review each request.
Similarly, thanking those who brought feedback to us after we first announced coaching education was coming in late 2022, and after the full announcement in May.
I’ve also heard much feedback about our new Club Membership structure, which combines our club membership into one, eliminating the previous Affiliate Club membership. So far, 155 clubs have been approved for our program which discounts the club membership to $199 — cheaper than most NGB club memberships. Affiliate Clubs were around a third of our clubs last year, representing around 14% of USA Fencing members; The grand majority of which are eligible for the program, where clubs are just simply listed as “clubs,” and receive the same level of benefits. Larger clubs are incentivized around growth, by having their rate based upon club membership. USA Fencing, like in 2022-23, is still substantially subsidizing the cost of the insurance of our clubs by around 50%.
We welcomed several rounds of membership feedback and made material changes to the program, including reducing cost and expanding that $199 program as a result of that feedback from the field. Another big item is expanding the trial membership program to make it easier for clubs to onboard new members; and for them to do outreach activities in the community spreading our sport. Previously that allowed for 14 consecutive days of trial membership, now it’s 14 non-consecutive days over a 90-day period.
So far, and thank you to the heartbeat of our support — USA Fencing’s clubs — it appears club renewals are in front of last year’s club renewals, which didn’t start until late August so it’s a challenge to give an apples to apples comparison.
Another issue is the Division Bylaws. Every USA Fencing member is automatically a member of a Division of USA Fencing, which primarily manages your local competitions. This year, supported by our Division Resource Team, we aligned the bylaws and local governance of these areas; an item that fits with our responsibility as the umbrella 501c3 nonprofit organization of which they are a part. I’ve heard many folks suggest we intend to nationalize the divisions — at this time I can say there is not a discussion of this, and I don’t envisage one in the future. We do need financial and governance transparency from the local level, but we don’t have any intent whatsoever to nationalize those divisions.
My ask is to take the opportunities for feedback we give you — they are many. We make ourselves constantly available, and we held two membership forums at Summer Nationals with a combined attendance of eight. We also conducted our first annual membership survey, and we’ve done the same for clubs and announced these programs in multiple places. We actively want to hear from you!
Meanwhile, speaking of membership feedback, we invite you to participate in our strategic planning process. We want you to have a voice in where the organization goes over the next few years and encourage you to take this opportunity to use that voice by taking the five-minute survey. The Board, Staff, Athlete Commission and U.S. Fencing Foundation trustees are meeting in September and we’ll be refreshing that strategic plan at that point.
Further, we are also looking for folks to seat on Committees. We encourage you to step forward and be a part of our structure because we are ultimately stronger with many brains in the room. While capacity can be limited, these committees are a major part of how we can make USA Fencing the best possible place to be. Apply by Aug. 7!
One highlight going on just now is a program reaching out to Parks & Recreation across the USA, as well as YMCA facilities. This is helping us in bringing the sport to more folks who otherwise won’t have been exposed to fencing — especially with Paris 2024 and LA2028 on the horizon.
There’s a great deal going on in the “off-season,” but enjoy this rest from competitive fencing for a little while and if we can be of service please do reach out to us, or “hit reply.”
Best,
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