Charisse Nixon, a psychology professor at Penn State Behrend, ran a simple exercise in her classroom. It showed, in a few minutes, something I have been telling parents at our club for years, usually without much success. She handed out a sheet with three words. The...
A kid walks to the strip and tells his parents, "I should win this." Twenty minutes later he walks back, mask under his arm, and says, "I could have won it." I have heard this pair so many times that I stopped counting. And every time, I know the bout was lost...
A father of a beginner asked me last week how long it would take his daughter to become a very good fencer. “ What do you mean by becoming a good fencer?” I asked. The father shrugged. “Well, winning national medals and being recruited.” I asked him a question back....
I read a post recently about yoga. Except, of course, it was not really about yoga. The author described falling out of poses over and over in class. She said that naturally her inner sense of balance isn't that good and to help her, her teacher had given her one...
Being one of the largest clubs in the country, we receive hundreds of emails every week. Parents, fencers, coaches, and the club all need to talk about billing, scheduling, health, training plans, competitions, logistics, equipment, and a hundred other things. With...
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...
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...
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...
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