In fencing, we talk a lot about touches, ratings, and results. We talk about footwork and blade work and tactics. We talk about mental resilience and about inner discipline. What we don’t talk about nearly enough is reputation — and yet, reputation is one of the most powerful forces shaping a fencer’s career, from their very first local tournament to the highest levels of international competition.

I’m not talking about rankings or results. I’m talking about what people say about you when you’re not in the room. What referees think when they see your name on the pool sheet or DE bout slip. What coaches whisper to their students before a bout against you. What your own teammates feel when they see you walk into practice.

Reputation has many facets, and every fencer, whether they realize it or not, is building theirs with every action, every bout, every interaction at the club and at competitions.

Among Coaches

Coaches talk. I know this because I’m one of them, and we all do it. At NACs, at regionals, in the hallways between strips, coaches share observations about fencers. Not just tactical observations, but character ones. “That kid works harder than anyone in her age group.” “Watch out, he falls apart after the first loss.” “She’s the real deal — never complains, never makes excuses.”

Your coach sees how you train on the days you don’t feel like training. Other coaches see how you carry yourself at competitions. And when your name comes up in conversation, and trust me, it will, what they say about you matters more than you think. College coaches ask club coaches and their own varsity team fencers about recruits. National team coaches notice who handles adversity well. The fencing world is tiny, and your reputation within it travels faster than you do.

Among Your Teammates

Your teammates see the version of you that nobody else sees. They see whether you give your best effort in practice or coast when the coach isn’t watching. They see whether you celebrate their victories or quietly resent them. They see whether you step up when the team needs you or disappear when things get hard.

Being a good teammate isn’t about being everyone’s best friend. It’s about showing up consistently, training honestly, and lifting the room instead of draining it. The fencers who do this earn something that can’t be bought or faked: the genuine respect of the people who train alongside them every day. And that respect, in turn, creates a training environment that makes everyone better , starting with you.

Among Your Peers

The fencing community at every level, from local to national and even international, is remarkably small. The same fencers show up tournament after tournament, year after year. Your peers remember how you behaved after a tough loss. They remember whether you saluted and shook hands with grace or stormed off the strip, whether you listened to your coach after your defeat or yelled at your parents as if it was their fault. They remember whether you were the fencer who encouraged others or the one who complained about every call. They notice if you talk about opponents with respect and dignity or badmouth them in disrespectful ways, diminishing their skills and achievements.

This matters beyond the strip. These are the people you’ll encounter for years, sometimes decades. Some will become your college teammates, or will end up on selection committees, or refereeing your bouts, or coaching your future opponents, or meet you in other endeavors of your life. The fencing world has a very long memory.

Among Your Opponents

I believe one of the hardest concepts for a young fencer to understand and internalize is that your opponents respect you not for your victories but for how you compete. And the reason it’s not about a medal but about your behaviour, because by tomorrow’s competition your medal is already in the past, while your behavior is something your opponent is about to experience all over again.

A fencer who fights hard, plays clean, and accepts the outcome with dignity earns a kind of respect that no medal can buy. Even in defeat, even after a devastating loss, the way you carry yourself tells your opponent everything they need to know about who you are. 

The other side is just as clear. A fencer known for theatrics, for arguing every call, for unsportsmanlike behavior — that fencer might win bouts, but they lose something far more valuable. Their opponents don’t respect them. They tolerate them. There’s a difference, and it’s one that compounds over time.

Among Referees

Let me be very direct about this one, because I think some fencers and parents underestimate how much this matters.

Referees are human. They strive to be fair and impartial, and the vast majority of them do an excellent job. And yes, they all make mistakes, sometimes obvious, sometimes in decisive moments, sometimes unjustified. But almost always unintentional, rarely aimed at you.

And referees are human, and humans notice patterns. A fencer who consistently shows respect for the referee’s authority — who doesn’t argue every call, who doesn’t throw their hands up after every touch, who doesn’t look at their coach for validation after every action — that fencer makes the referee’s job easier. And a referee whose job is easier is a referee who is more relaxed, more focused, and more likely to give the benefit of the doubt on a close call.

On the other hand, a fencer who has built a reputation for constant complaining, for questioning every decision, for dramatic reactions — that fencer has created an adversarial dynamic before the bout even starts. Referees remember. They remember who made their day harder and who made it easier. This isn’t bias — it’s human nature.

Among Parents

This one might surprise you, but the parents in the fencing community are watching too. They watch how other children behave. They notice which fencers are respectful, which are kind to younger competitors, which ones, after a devastating loss, stayed to cheer their own child and did it with genuine enthusiasm and camaraderie. They notice which child gave their opponent a spare body cord or weapon when their opponent broke their gear and ran out of the spares in competition. And other parents talk about it — to each other, to their own children, and sometimes to coaches.

A young fencer with a reputation for good character becomes someone that other parents point to as an example. “Did you see how she handled that loss? That’s what sportsmanship looks like.” That kind of reputation ripples outward in ways you might never see directly, but it shapes how the entire community perceives you and your family.

The Touch You Didn’t Take

Let me give you one concrete example that captures everything I’m talking about.

In epee, there are moments when the machine registers a touch that you know wasn’t real. Maybe your point grazed the floor. Maybe you felt the hit land on a scoring machine before it touched your opponent. The referee awards you the point. The score changes in your favor. Nobody would ever know.

Except you would know.

At the highest levels of fencing — at World Cups and Championships — there are fencers who, at 14-14 in a decisive bout, will tell the referee: “That wasn’t my touch.” They will voluntarily give up a point that could win them the match, because their integrity matters more to them than the result.

And the opposite is just the same: an opponent might hit your foot but the referee rules the floor and the confused opponent shrugs in disappointment, knowing that she can’t convince the referee otherwise, despite how much her coach yells at the referee that the touch landed on your toe. But you feel it on your toe, you clench it inside your shoe. That’s the moment you should raise your hand and acknowledge the validity of the touch, even if you are going to lose the bout with this.

Think about that. At the most critical moment, with everything on the line, the world’s best fencers choose honesty. If they can do it at that level, with that much at stake, then our young fencers can do it at domestic tournaments too.

And when a young fencer does this, everyone notices. The referee notices. The opponent notices. The parents on the sideline notice. Both your and your opponent’s coaches notice. In that single moment, that fencer has built more reputation than a dozen medals could provide. Because what they’ve demonstrated isn’t skill, it’s character. And character, unlike a rating, doesn’t expire.

There Is No Short-Lived Reputation

Reputation is not a single moment. It’s not one good deed or one bad day. It’s the accumulation of hundreds of small choices made over months and years. How you warm up. How you respond to a bad call. How you treat a weaker opponent. How you handle a loss to someone you expected to beat. Whether you stay to cheer for your teammates after you’ve been eliminated. Whether you clean up after yourself at the venue.

Each of these moments is small. None of them, individually, seems to matter much. But they add up, relentlessly and, at first glance, invisibly, into something that either opens doors for you or quietly closes them.

A fencer who spends two years cutting corners, complaining, and showing poor character cannot fix it with one gracious handshake. Reputation is built slowly and it changes slowly. That’s what makes it so powerful and so important to get right from the beginning.

What You’re Really Building

When I watch young fencers at competitions, I’m not just watching their technique. I’m watching how they carry themselves. I’m watching whether they salute with meaning or rush through it. I’m watching whether they look their opponent in the eye. I’m watching what they do in the minutes after a loss — do they sit with it, learn from it, get up? Or do they blame the referee, the weapon, the coach, the parent?

The fencers who build strong reputations are the ones who succeed in the long run — not just in fencing, but in everything that comes after. The reputation you build on the strip is a rehearsal for the reputation you’ll build in college, in your career, in your life.

Medals tarnish, ratings reset and rankings roll over. But your reputation lasts.

There is a saying in fencing that half of your career you work for your reputation and in the second half it works for you. And when you think about it, isn’t that true for any aspect of your life?

So build it well.