Academy of Fencing Masters Blog

Let’s first of all be excited that a fencer is part of the standard emoji set! The fencer was added to Emoji 3.0 and Unicode 9.0 in 2016. What that means that this is a standard emoji that you can use everywhere no matter what your device. You can send the little fencer emoji to anyone and everyone in your contacts list not matter what you’re using OR they’re using. It shows how prominent fencing is becoming!

Emojipedia tells us that this fencer’s official name is “person fencing”, which isn’t much of a name but it sure is an accurate description. What you might not know is that not every fencing emoji is the same, depending on what platform you’re using. We were honestly shocked to discover how widely these fencers vary! Could they even really be considered the same fencer, or are there different fencers in different emoji universes?

The following pictures are taken from Emojipedia and cover all of the major platforms. Go ahead, check your devices and see what your fencer looks like. (I did when I  started writing this.)

Below we rank the eight most common fencer emoji from silliest to most realistic. We also talk a little bit about what each of these fencers is probably thinking, what’s going on with them, and at times we question the reality of the emoji universe.

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There’s a lot of conversation going on right now about what exactly it means to be a woman – what are the limits on women in our world and what should their role be?

We see women and men competing in fencing with a shared vigor. That goes from our youngest new fencers who are walking into the club for the first time to the veterans who have been at this for a long time. Not only are women in fencing powerful, but they’re gaining. Women’s fencing is growing!

Fencing is a sport that many people see as being rooted in male power and showmanship. However we have seen over the course of the history of women in fencing that it’s so much more than that. Women have carved out not only a place for themselves in the world of fencing, they’ve made it their own.

Where once the idea was  that men were there to use their swords to protect women from harm, the real truth is that women don’t need protecting. Female fencers prove it!

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This weekend, we celebrate Mother’s Day and as the mom of four fencing kids I look forward to the extra family time to connect and enjoy one another.

While the joy of watching our children thrive in a sport they love and are passionate about is part of why we chose to do all of this, it doesn’t make it any less exhausting at times.

I know I’m not alone in this. Being a fencing mom is often a thankless and tiresome endeavor that involves a lot of extra thinking, planning, organizing, worrying, and executing of all of these plans and organization.

That’s why I’d like to share with you the one thing that your fencing Mom might want to get this Mother’s Day, and every day.

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One of the most problematic areas of detecting a valid touch in epee is a foot touch. Even at the highest level of competition with grounded pistes there is always a concern whether the touch was valid or not, especially near the strip’s boundary. Many epee competitors and  coaches have experienced situations when a valid foot touch was not counted, or when a floor touch was mistakenly awarded.

Academy of Fencing Masters have spent the last 5 years to develop a real fool proof solution to this problem! Our innovative design of epee tip allows a valid recognition of 100% foot touches.

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