Academy of Fencing Masters – Beginner Summer Fencing Camp #1 (July 2014)

It’s not easy to put into words the excitement and pride we feel after a wonderful five days last week at the AFM Beginner Fencing Camp. This was the first of our summer camps for the year and we’re off to a great start. It’s truly amazing to watch these young fencers get better each day, have fun, and also begin to love this sport that we are so passionate about. They brought such joy and energy to the camp each and every day and their enthusiasm was infectious.

It was a week filled with both hard work and fun. We made sure to start each day outside in the fresh air: it is summer after all! So we warmed up each day in Campbell Park before heading into the club. We worked on footwork, motivation, focus, agility, and beginner bout strategy and skills. We learned about fencing rules and safety in fencing. We also made time for some games to work on teamwork, get to know each other, and just have a good time!

You can check out videos of our time at camp on our YouTube channel. We’ve also posted pictures to our Facebook page. Here’s the YouTube video from Day 5:

Academy of Fencing Masters – Beginner Fencing Camp #1 (July 2014)

The great thing about a weeklong camp is that the kids get used to being active for long periods and towards the end of the week, we were able to really push them towards more technical skills and challenge them to try new things. When you’re new to a sport, you can progress in leaps and bounds and it’s exciting to watch the breakthroughs!

Fencing is a very strategic and mental sport, so we also had sessions to develop this side of our campers. Each day we took time to do exercises in sports psychology with themes like staying calm in difficult situations and believing in yourself. During a session on visualization we had the kids build paper airplanes out of paper where they’d written down their dreams. Well, we know the kids learned a lot at camp, but if we learned anything it’s that our young fencers are ambitious. To own a company that invents things, to earn a gold medal in fencing: they sure know how to dream big!

We ended the week with a graduation ceremony and a fencing demo for the parents. The kids loved showing off what they had learned throughout the week. Congratulations to our newest graduates of the AFM Beginner Fencing Camp! We are so proud of you!

The most common comment our graduates wrote on their celebration board at graduation was “I love fencing!” Well, we must say that warms our hearts here at AFM. As parents, we feel strongly about helping kids find a sport that they love because we believe that competitive sports lead to happier, healthier kids. So to watch these young fencers enjoy learning and start to fall in love with the sport is truly watching our dreams come true.

We have our second Beginner Fencing Camp next week. We will have twice as many fencers and after last week’s enthusiastic group, we can’t wait to see what’s in store for us with the next group!

Beginner Fencing Camp Graduation