It seems like only yesterday that we started the AFM blog, but it’s already been three years. Back in 2014 we never could have imagined how wonderfully this venture would have turned out. It’s a labor of love that we love to do.
Fencing is incredibly misunderstood, in fact it’s probably the most misunderstood sport out there.
This is a very niche sport, which is a blessing because it means that we get to have these very close relationships with one another. It’s also a bit of a curse because most of the information about the sport is transferred in an old way – by word of mouth. Given that people in general are very little educated about fencing (if at all), many of them stay in the dark even after a few years of their child fencing. We realized early on that there was very little valuable information out there about fencing to help families make sense of the whole scenario. As wonderful and supportive as the fencing community it is, many parents (including ourselves – our own children started fencing five years ago!) really had to dig deep to understand all the nuances of the sport – from equipment questions to qualification.
There’s so much talk today of what role parents should take in the lives of their children. Parents in sport seem to be constantly accused of either being overprotective and not allowing their kids to learn from loss, or else being too distant and letting their kids have too much responsibility.