Fencing helps everyone! It brings people together. It keeps our bodies fit and our minds sharp. Fencing isn’t just about swordfighting – it’s about personal development. This is a transformative sport that moves us to being more than just who we are.
To that end, we are happy to announce that we are opening a new AFM location in Sunnyvale, California!
Features of the AFM Fencing Location in Sunnyvale
The new space has a great many features that we’re excited about. It’s just a great physical space! This location, located at Lawrence Expressway and CA-237 (Full address – 1269 Forgewood Ave., Sunnyvale, CA 94089), is a state of the art facility. There are some impressive details for this space, and our fencers new and old will be excited about the features:
- 24 full length strips
- Large gym room for conditioning training
- Fully air conditioned
- Large parents lounge
- Large locker room
- Large breakout / cafeteria room
- Ample parking space
There are a lot of things that we love about this place and it will allow us to do a lot of different things for our fencing community. We will be able to run classes concurrently at different levels. This means easy make up classes for both AFM Campbell and AFM Sunnyvale fencers, regular open fencing, veteran fencing programs, and so much more. The size and scope of the location allows us to do a wider variety of things with our students than has ever been possible. Not only that, but parents and families will have a fantastic new space at the Sunnyvale location – we recognize that the fencers don’t do this alone!
A new area for fencing
Our fencing community just keeps growing! That’s entirely thanks to the people who genuinely care about and support our sport. We are so excited because this new fencing facility allows us to support this growing fencing community to a whole new level!
The convenient location of our Sunnyvale club will allow more people from all over the Bay Area to participate in fencing. We will be able to provide fencing classes for children and adults well beyond just the Sunnyvale area proper and on to areas further out, such as Cupertino, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Fremont, San Jose, Santa Clara, and of course Sunnyvale itself.
Our original club in Campbell is fantastic, and that same energy and drive is coming to Sunnyvale and beyond in spades. We are so excited to see new members and let the AFM family of fencing grow.
This space was born out of a passion for giving more people the opportunity to participate in this sport. Our fencers have inspired us to give more to the community!
And again, we thank you to our existing students for making this growth possible. None of this happens without your support throughout our years of operation. Thank you!
Tournament and clinic opportunities
One of the big advantages of this new and expanded space is the potential to bring in larger regional tournaments.
The Bay Area is one of the most developed fencing communities in the nation, and Central California division lead the United States in the growth as well as in number of people participating at the national level in fencing tournaments like NAC’s and Nationals. Olympians and World Championships medalists call California their home, yet we notoriously lack big regional events in CenCal division such as SYC’s, Division 1A ROC’s and RJCC’s compared to other regions, so we plan to bid for these tournaments.
The AFM Sunnyvale facilities are spacious enough to host such big events and help our local community to fence at the high regional level without a need to travel far from home.
Outside of just tournaments, this new space will allow us to host more resources for our fencers in terms of training. We can bring in larger clinics and camps with higher level fencing coaches and athletes. That’s important! We want to be able to give our fencers every advantage, and this space gives us that opportunity. It’s all about the students!
Fencing in the Bay Area keeps growing
California is really the perfect area to be a fencer. And we live in perfect time for US fencing to be a fencer. We really hope that our new Sunnyvale location will allow so many more fencers here to jump into the sport and get all of the incredible benefits from it.
Thank you so much to all of our hardworking staff who have helped to make this new location possible. Thank you to our fencers over the years for allowing us to grow to the point that we can do this. It’s your passion and drive that have paved the way for this expansion, and you continue to inspire us.
Part of our core mission has always been the notion that we would expand the sport of fencing as far as we possibly could. That journey is a huge piece of what we do at AFM. Thank you to everyone who has supported us and who continues to be a part of the AFM fencing family!
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