We want to thank all of our AFM family from the bottom of our hearts for a truly fantastic 2014. It’s been quite a year. We finished our first season as a club and jumped headfirst into our second. In true AFM fashion, we had high hopes for the year, but together we have surpassed them.
On this New Year’s Eve we’d like to recall a few of our favorite highlights from the year:
We ran into some confusion last month at a Men’s Junior Olympic Qualifier that resulted in red cards and damage to fencers’ uniforms, and it was all due to an inaccurate rule enforcement! The rules in fencing are often very strict because of the sport’s noble beginnings, but in this case, the tournament organizers and referees were mistaken. It was a good lesson in that the people in charge are not always right.
What a great way to finish a year! We can all head into the holiday season with smiles and pride. We are ecstatic to report our results from this past weekend’s Northern California RYC at Treasure Island in San Francisco. Our fencers took home 17 (!) medals – in 7 out of 12 events in which our team had participated. As a second-year club, we are thrilled to be competing with the best fencers in the area and showing great results.
Read through these impressive results!
If you haven’t finished your holiday shopping, you can knock a couple items off your holiday gift list simply by heading to our website and ordering AFM Gifts Certificates that can be used to sign up for classes. You can order by email or mail delivery, so you could have your gift certificates in your email inbox today!
Why gift fencing classes?
No one likes to lose, but it happens. It’s important to face this reality head on when it comes to parenting an athlete. Your child winning their first fencing competition is not impossible, but it’s very unlikely. As a matter of fact, your child may not win a bout their entire first season. That’s quite common with first-year fencers, especially if they start in a more advanced youth category, such as Y14 and even Y12. The “wins” will come slowly as your child starts scoring a few points, and then more points, always getting closer to that first real win.
Ultimately, your child will have to learn to deal with loss on their own: you can’t do it for them as much as you’d like to. Like I said in a recent post, when helping your children cope with loss in the moment, “… it’s more about what you shouldn’t do rather than what you should do.” Well, when setting expectations, I think there’s a bit more room for active parenting in that you can help your child learn that it’s not always about winning and that achievements take hard work and sometimes slow progress.
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