Children’s fencing, even without victories, gives a child a kind of confidence that no school can provide. But very few parents truly understand this. Most parents, I would dare to say maybe ninety percent of them, look mostly at medals. I get it – medals are tangible, you can hang them on a wall, and post the podium moments  on Instagram. They feel like proof that all those hours of driving, all that money on equipment and tournament fees, all those early mornings — that it’s all “working.” While a medalless child might feel like a parental failure.

But, both as a coach and a parent of four fencers, I deeply believe that the real return on investment in children’s fencing has almost nothing to do with medals. And most parents miss it completely.

The Boy Who Never Won Anything

Let me tell you about a fencer who almost never earns a medal in fencing. No podium finishes. No first place. Some rare top 8 in a small competition. Nothing to show for it at the first glance, at least, nothing his mother could see.

The mom was already thinking about pulling her son out. Why keep spending time and money on something that brings no results?

Then, at a parent-teacher meeting, the teacher said something she wasn’t expecting: “Your son is the only one in the class who isn’t afraid to answer and speak up in front of everyone.”

The mother didn’t make the connection. But the connection is as clear as day.

That boy had been standing on a fencing strip, alone, in front of referees, spectators, opponents and their yelling coaches, many times over. He had been losing much more often than he won. He had been told what he did wrong, and then he’d gone back and tried again. He had learned to walk into a fencing venue where things might not go his way, and to fence anyway.

The classroom after that was an easy walk for him.

He wasn’t braver than the other kids because of some personality trait, but because he had practiced being brave. Every bout, every tournament, every loss — they were all reps in the gym of confidence. The fencing strip was the input. The teacher saw the output.

Think about this for a second.

While her son’s  friends sit at home and are afraid to raise their hands in class, he was bouting against the best fencers in his age group at a competition. Yes, he might finish the tournament without medals, can make devastating mistakes and lose bouts he was supposed to win.

But every single one of those competitions is a brick in the foundation of his confidence. Because your son dared. Because he stepped onto that strip against a stronger opponent with a desire to show his best, to try his hardest, to compete. 

That’s not losing–that’s building character.

And later, your son grows up and wouldn’t get lost at job interviews. He wouldn’t be afraid of presentations. He would know how to take a hit, both on the job and in life, and keep going, because he trained to fall. He practiced failure in a safe environment, over and over, until failure lost its power to paralyze him.

Fencing gave him something better than a trophy. Fencing gave him confidence to fail and come back.

Children’s Sport Is Not a Conveyor Belt for Champions

Let me be direct, because I think some parents need to hear this.

One in a million becomes a champion. Maybe not even that. To become a champion, you need health, physical ability, mental strength, luck, unwavering parental support, discipline and motivation, and the right timing. Remove any single one of those ingredients and the recipe falls apart.

But that doesn’t mean in the slightest that the other kids, who don’t become champions, are losers. Not even close.

They gain something that no school curriculum can teach. They learn to step out in front of other people’s eyes when everything inside them is tightening with fear. They learn to make decisions in a fraction of a second. They learn to fall and get back up. They learn to hear criticism and keep working. Time after time again, bout after bout, competition after competition.

Tell me: which school class teaches that? Which homework assignment? Which standardized test?

Coaches Are Not Prophets

Parents often ask me (and I bet every other coach in the country)— will my child become a champion?

Frankly? Most likely, no. There is only one champion each year, and the odds are… the odds. So many things affect the outcome. Even a “guaranteed medal” is never guaranteed, as we saw in Milan’s Olympics with the Quad God  Ilia Malinin, who arrived at the Games as the overwhelming favorite and walked away without individual gold. In fencing, an open skill sport where the referees’ calls add another layer of unpredictability, when an opponent wants to beat you in head-to-head combat, or when equipment might fail without you noticing it at the very critical moment, the outcome is even less certain.

No coach can tell you at age eight what your child will achieve at age twenty. Coaches are not fortune tellers. We see potential, we see effort, we see character — but we cannot see the future. Those who tell you that, I would recommend taking it with a grain of salt, to put it mildly.

But even if your child never becomes a champion, they will learn something invaluable – not to give up. And that ability to absorb a blow and keep moving forward is worth more than any medal.

A medal is a moment on the podium. Character is for life.

They will develop courage and discipline, ability to work in a team, learn to respect an opponent, to hold themselves together when things go wrong. The kids should do sports not for trophies, but for the kind of personal growth that shapes who they become as adults. And the harder it is for them to become champions, the more resilient they’d become.

Before You Pull Them Out

So if your child does fencing and the victories aren’t coming, don’t rush to take them out. Don’t look at the medal count and decide it’s not worth it.

Instead, ask them a simple question: “What do you feel when you step onto the strip?”

If they say, “It’s scary, but I handle it. I will learn from it” — then you’ve already won. That answer, right there, is the main victory. More important than any gold.

Your child may rarely stand on a podium. But every time they stand on that strip, face an opponent, and choose to compete despite the fear and the uncertainty, they are becoming someone. Someone who doesn’t quit, who knows that growth lives on the other side of discomfort, and who will walk into the hard rooms of adult life and not flinch.

That medalless child? He’s building something no trophy case can hold.