Summer Nationals 2026 in Portland is almost here. If you are a parent heading to your first national-level fencing competition, you are probably feeling a mix of excitement and nerves. After helping hundreds of families through their first nationals over the years, I...
USA Fencing just announced a change to the domestic points system. Call it anything other than seismic and you are underselling it. Here is their announcement: A Simpler Path Through the Sport This is a major change in how American domestic fencing is run, and it will...
You need to appreciate that the only thing you will never have in abundance is your time. You can have money, and with time you can earn interest on it, multiply it, invest it. But time is something that is absolutely finite, and with each passing moment each of us...
Today I had a conversation that went badly wrong. I said something that landed as a personal attack. It was not intended as one. What I actually felt, what I was actually reacting to, lived in a register the other person had no access to. I was transmitting on a...
I recently reviewed Andre Agassi's autobiography Open on this blog, and the response was significant. Many fencing parents told me they picked up the book because of that review. That's great — it's an extraordinary memoir that every sports parent should read. But I'm...
Ask any soccer parent what their kid does in practice, and conditioning will come up before they finish the first sentence. Think about basketball, swimming, track and field. In every one of these sports, conditioning is just part of the deal. Nobody questions it....
We've all waited a long time for the appearance of a professional fencing league. There were at least two attempts in the past that I remember, and they all miserably failed. Until now. Meet the World Fencing League, founded by Miles Chamley-Watson — three-time...
There's a moment that happens at almost every competition I attend. A fencer comes off the strip after a loss. Before she even has time to take off her mask, her parent is already there: "Why didn't you finish your attack when she was at the back line? You had the...
I recently stumbled again upon The Nine Gifts book, to which I contributed an interview about attention — what it means in fencing, how we develop it, and why it transfers to life outside the sport. It got me thinking about something I rarely write about directly on...
Every time USA Fencing publishes a schedule, a huge portion of parents start complaining, both about event days and event start time. I'm among these complainers. We don't like anything: why does this age group event end at night and the next age group event start at...
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