Academy of Fencing Masters Blog

In a competition in Washington DC, I witnessed a situation that immediately prompted me to write a post about it. Unfortunately, this is all too common in our sport, and I've never seen a competition without it. However, this time, the girl put it so eloquently in her...

Before kids are even born, we’re bombarded with the idea that everything has to be measured. How long is the baby during each sonogram? How many times did they kick in the last 24 hours? Are they on time for their due date?  Once they get here, we're told to...

Most kids start sports somewhere like tiny soccer leagues or toddler gymnastics classes, but most of them start learning to work with teammates and play right on the playground. They naturally transition from one activity to another, but all too often we see kids and...

There’s a great misunderstanding about what fencing does for kids and where it should fall in their lives, both now and in the future. Not so much within the fencing community, but definitely with people who are looking at it from the outside.  With other activities,...

I recently had a discussion with a concerned parent who made the decision not to sign up her daughter for a fencing competition. Her reasoning was that in her last tournament, her daughter had only won three bouts in the pools and lost her first Direct Elimination...

What are the things that make life really rich and meaningful? When you think about your own childhood, you probably don’t remember the things you did so much as the people you did them with. Your best friend who sat next to you in math class and made you laugh every...

Fencing can begin as young as seven or even six years old, and we want to encourage those littlest fencers to get the most out of the sport. Any parent will tell you that elementary school-aged kids have very different needs than middle school or high school-aged...

Adolescence is a challenging time for lots of reasons. It marks the transition from being a kid to being an adult, but those intervening years are anything but easy on pre-teens and teenagers. Fencing can really help young people navigate this often unbalanced time....

One thing that parents are always looking for is new things for their kids to participate in. We want our kids to have the opportunity to learn new things, even as we want them to find that perfect activity and focus on it so they can excel.  Keeping their bodies and...