It seems like only yesterday that we started the AFM blog, but it’s already been three years. Back in 2014 we never could have imagined how wonderfully this venture would have turned out. It’s a labor of love that we love to do.

Fencing is incredibly misunderstood, in fact it’s probably the most misunderstood sport out there.

This is a very niche sport, which is a blessing because it means that we get to have these very close relationships with one another. It’s also a bit of a curse because most of the information about the sport is transferred in an old way – by word of mouth. Given that people in general are very little educated about fencing (if at all), many of them stay in the dark even after a few years of their child fencing. We realized early on that there was very little valuable information out there about fencing to help families make sense of the whole scenario. As wonderful and supportive as the fencing community it is, many parents (including ourselves – our own children started fencing five years ago!) really had to dig deep to understand all the nuances of the sport – from equipment questions to qualification.

All of that led into our choice to start this blog. It began with a simple mission – to help fencing parents navigate in the sea of fencing information, learn as much and as easy as possible, find one place of information about fencing. We learned a lot ourselves during our journey and wanted to share this knowledge with others. Oftentimes a lack of knowledge and simple ignorance lead to the sport being misinterpreted and misrepresented. There were so many parents that were afraid even to think about fencing “because it is too dangerous since they use real swords!”. One of our first posts was a response to explain to these parents that no, fencing is not dangerous, it is actually among the safest sports out there!

Why we keep blogging

What drives us to continue to post every week, even when things get busy and life gets crazy, is the huge positive feedback that we get from the community. You all give so much to us! We feel so much incredible support from everyone in the form of comments, shares, emails, private and public discussions. Sometimes it can be difficult to nail down new topics, and to continue writing.

Keeping a regular schedule is often grueling, and it’s easy to find ourselves fried out with constantly coming up with new material that’s really valuable to the members of the fencing community. But somewhere out of the blue we’ll get some inspiration, often from far away like Australia or Europe, or even from some small town here in the United States, and we find that we’re ready to dig back in. Then we get some new insight into a specific topic and we’re ready to go again.

We feel strongly that the web needs positive places for people to come for information, and we hope that our website is a small piece of cyberspace that brings joy and positivity to the lives of the people who read it. There is a lot of negativity out there, but life doesn’t have to be that way. Our promise to you is that we will always work hard to get you the best information that we can for you. Whether it’s the latest news, tips from mom, relevant rule changes, or practice tips from our experts, everything that we post is meant for you.

In the last three years it seems that we’ve posted on everything. From how to get national points so you attend the big summer games to how to clean your fencing shoes. We work hard to put a wide variety of  topics out there for you, and hopefully we are able to give you a foundation in or to expand your knowledge.

Help spread the good word about fencing.

What we would like to ask our community to help us and to help others. Here are some steps that you can take to help spread the word about fencing in general and our blog in particular.

1.      Comment in the blog.

Many people ask us questions and clarifications in private emails. While we are happy to answer oftentimes this question is relevant to many other readers, so please don’t hesitate to reach out.  Answering your questions in the blog will definitely help many of the people who are reading along.

2.      Share and forward this blog to your fencing friends.

We believe that more people are educated the better fencing as a sport will be in the US. And of course we all would love this a lot! Share it on social media!

3.      Tell us your ideas

If you have any topic that you would like us to explore or want to share your own article on a fencing related subject – we would love to answer and/or publish your post

Again, we cannot say enough THANK YOU! This is a venture of passion for us, and it’s one that we know makes a difference . Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

At AFM, we’re committed to building strong online community for the world of fencing, starting with our blog. Thank you for the last three years and we look forward to many more here at the AFM blog. We love fencing, we love our community and our blog is our modest attempt to address these challenges the sport faces among mainstream sport giants.

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