Who are your best teachers? We tend to put teachers in a box in a schoolhouse, with a blackboard and rows of desks. That’s a bit of a narrow definition if you think about it, because teachers are much more than that. Teachers come in all shapes and sizes, from our parents as our first teachers to our children as our teachers later on in life. If you’re a fencer, then your fencing teachers have a great influence on your development, one that we appreciate far beyond our time on the strip.
Behind every exceptional person
I recently finished reading Stephen Hawking’s book “Brief Answers to The Big Questions”, and in the last chapter he wrote:
“If you look behind every exceptional person there is an exceptional teacher. When each of us thinks about what we can do in life, chances are we can do it because of a teacher” (p.201)
Teaching someone is more than just telling someone how to do something. It’s a connection, a human bond that brings richness to the lives of both the student and the teacher. Teachers are transformative for the lives of their students.
Though people throw around the word “sport” as though it’s just one thing, that’s of course a blanket way to use the term. There are dozens of sports that have risen up to the mainstream in the United States, many more if you count those around the world. Even the world’s most widely known athletic competition, the Olympics, does not include popular sports like American football and cricket, while at the same time highlighting smaller niche sports like archery, curling, and yes fencing. 
Fencing and tennis are not entirely different sports. Both are individual, with two opponents and a referee required. Both are prized sports in the Olympics. Both invoke a 
Something that we’ve heard people ask, more than once, is “Why should I pay so much for my child to do fencing?”
