Fellow fencers, coaches, parents, and clubs – we need your voice and your immediate action.
On June 29th, the USA Fencing Board will vote on bylaw changes that would fundamentally strip away our democratic voice in how our sport is governed. This isn’t just about politics – it’s about whether the people who live and breathe fencing daily will have any real say in the decisions that affect our tournaments, our families, our clubs, and our sport’s future.
There is a petition to the board that stands between us and a complete loss of member voice. Let me explain why signing this petition is the most important action you can take for fencing today.
The Stark Reality: A Board Disconnected from Fencing
While fencing powerhouses like Italy and France have boards that focus laser-sharp on actual fencing – tournaments, formats, schedules, rules, athlete development – our USA Fencing Board has become consumed with peripheral issues. They debate NAC locations and social policies while completely ignoring the core fencing challenges we face every day:
- Tournament logistics that burden families
- Event scheduling chaos
- Format decisions made without fencer input and ignoring fencers needs
- Day-to-day operational hurdles affecting clubs and coaches
- Equipment and rules issues that impact competition
This disconnect isn’t accidental – it’s structural. And now they want to make it permanent and even more disconnected.
The Proposed Changes: Democracy Under Siege
The Board wants to:
- Eliminate one of only 5 member-elected positions – reducing our already limited voice
- Make petition candidacy virtually impossible – raising signature requirements from 50 to 6% of voting members (about 700-800 signature)
- Concentrate all real nominating power in a Board-appointed committee with no accountability to members
Let’s be clear about what this means: The Board will choose who you get to vote for. That’s not democracy – that’s the illusion of choice.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
As USA Fencing grows toward 70,000 members by LA28, we need MORE member representation, not less. The appointed “independent” directors, while perhaps business-savvy, lack the deep understanding of fencing’s unique challenges that only comes from living in our sport daily.
Members are the ones with maximum skin in the game:
- We know tournament logistics because we navigate them with our families
- We understand coaching challenges because we live them
- We see equipment issues because we deal with them at every practice
- We feel scheduling conflicts because they disrupt our lives
- We know qualification problems in and out because we breathe them daily
- We know what works and what doesn’t because we experience the consequences
The Pattern of Exclusion
This isn’t theoretical. As someone who ran twice for Board At-Large Director specifically to bridge this disconnect, I experienced firsthand how the current system already works to exclude member voices. Twice, the nominating committee rejected my candidacy despite meeting all qualification requirements and significant community support, forcing the difficult petition process both times.
The current 50-signature requirement was challenging enough. The proposed 700-800 hand-written signatures? It’s designed to be impossible.
Why This Matters to YOU Personally
“This is just big politics stuff – I’m just a fencer/parent/referee/coach. Why should I bother with this? It’s not my concern.”
You couldn’t be more wrong.
This is your DIRECT concern. Here’s what happens when a small, unaccountable group gains monopoly control over your sport:
Your Wallet Gets Hit:
- Membership fees skyrocket with no member input on increases
- Tournament entry fees jump because there’s no one to question “why?”
- NAC costs (travel, unnecessary long lodging, unreasonable event composition, etc) spiral out of control because convenience isn’t their priority
Your Schedule Gets Destroyed:
- Events scheduled with zero consideration for family logistics
- Tournament formats that serve administrative convenience, not competitive fairness
- National competitions moved to locations that benefit board connections, not participants
Your Competition Quality Plummets:
- Referees underpaid and overworked because there’s no advocate for proper compensation
- Referee quality diminishes as experienced officials leave the system
- Tournament operations suffer as cost-cutting takes priority over athlete experience
Your Sport Gets Left Behind:
- USA rules lag behind international changes because “independent” directors don’t understand the sport
- Equipment standards become outdated because no one on the board actually uses the gear (how many years it took to standardize the left handed knickers?)
- Training and development programs designed by people who’ve never coached a practice
Your Voice Disappears:
- Complaints about tournament conditions fall on deaf ears
- Suggestions for improvement get ignored because board members don’t face consequences
- Problems that affect thousands of members get dismissed as “minor issues”
The Cascade Effect: How Democracy Dies in Sports
Before you know it, USA Fencing transforms into something unrecognizable. You’ll wonder “How did this happen to us?”
I’ll tell you exactly how: Every democracy – from nations to sports organizations – dies the same way. The population either stops paying attention or chooses to stay silent when their rights are under attack.
Here’s the progression:
- First, they reduce your representation (“just one less position”)
- Then, they make opposition impossible (“just a small signature increase”)
- Next, they ignore your concerns (“the board knows best”)
- Finally, they change everything while you wonder what happened
Real-world example: USA Gymnastics lost member voice and faced a $380 million settlement plus sponsor exodus. USA Swimming transferred budget authority from 400,000 members to a 15-person board. The US Olympic Committee required congressional intervention for “financial mismanagement” when governance became disconnected from athletes. In each case, concentrated power in the hands of a few led to decisions that served institutional interests rather than participant needs.
What’s Really at Stake
This isn’t just about board composition – it’s about the fundamental question: Will USA Fencing be governed by and for its members, or will it become a closed system run by a self-selecting elite?
The proposed changes create a perfect closed loop:
- Board appoints Nominating Committee
- Nominating Committee selects candidates
- Members get to “choose” from pre-selected options
- Rinse and repeat
This is how you get a board that focuses on everything except fencing.
Take Action NOW
If you care about the future of USA Fencing, SIGN THE PETITION!
Then do more:
- Contact Board members directly – tell them you oppose these changes
- Share this with your club, your fencing friends, your coaches
- Attend the June 29th meeting if possible
- Make noise on social media – use #PreserveFencingVoice
The Bottom Line
USA Fencing is at a crossroads. We can either move toward a more democratic, member-focused organization that prioritizes actual fencing issues, or we can surrender our voice to a system designed to exclude us from meaningful participation.
The choice is ours – but only if we act before June 29th.
Our sport deserves better. Our members deserve better. Our future Olympians deserve better.
Sign the petition. Speak up. Don’t let them silence your voice.
Remember: This affects every tournament your child fences, every club event you attend, every coaching decision that impacts your training, and every policy that shapes our sport’s future. If you care about fencing, you need to care about this.
I am signing the petition.
Fantastic! Thank you!
Agreed
Hope you sign too!
You are misrepresenting the role of the Board. The Board is responsible for governance, not operations. Most of the issues you mention (tournament logistics, scheduling, and “day to day operational hurdles”) are operational and not governance – those are handled by the the National Office. Proposals for the other two – format changes and equipment rules – come from the committees responsible for those areas (the Tournament Committee and SEMI, respectively.) And those committees are 100% comprised of people from within the fencing community.
You are doing a disservice to your readers to suggest that the Board is responsible for all of those things. It gives people an inaccurate understanding of how our sport is governed and operated. As a former candidate for an At-Large position on the Board, you should know this.
The governance dictates operations. Cant be disconnected.
The Board creates the Strategic Plan which outlines the short- and long-term goals of the organization. It is then the job of the operational side (the National Office) to implement that plan. The Board, by design, does not micromanage that process. The Board’s role at that point is to approve the budget and to evaluate the performance of the CEO with respect to how successful he/she is at executing on those goals.
That is how the “governance dictates operations”. Not through micromanagement of the National Office staff.
Wrong. Governance dictates operations. USA Fencing governance sucks. Pretty much the entire governing Board has been hijacked by a bunch of woke lunatics more interested in transgender politics and DEI nonsense than promoting the sports of fencing. They are out of touch with the vast majority of the fencing community and what’s even worse, they don’t care.
6% seems a much more reasonable bar. Anyone can find 49 fellow whackadoodles on the internet to waste everyone’s time (or worse).
You obviously not familiar with the petition process. A petitioner must gather 50 hand written signatures from USA Fencing members in a good standing with voting rights and they must be from 10 different clubs. If you believe it’s easy, try to run. The 49 fellow whackadoodles on the internet wouldn’t count.
It’s not as hard as you make it sound. With NACs and regional events that are over 3000 fencers, collecting signatures is not difficult. There are over 15000 eligible voting members. Needing 6% of that number is entirely reasonable. Petitioning shouldn’t be easy – it should be just hard enough to demonstrate that a candidate has wide support among the membership. If the candidate does not have wide support, why are they running?
The petitioner does not have to personally collect the signatures. In past elections, petition forms were circulated at clubs around the country and sent in separately. All it takes is a bit of organization and, again, support for the petitioner’s candidacy by others.
Glad you solved the problem, Dan!
Thank you for your article, but I find the tone overly inflammatory and unproductive. Just because your nomination did not get accepted does not mean there is a pattern of exclusion, and I suspect you have a personal axe to grind with USA fencing.
“This isn’t theoretical. As someone who ran twice for Board At-Large Director specifically to bridge this disconnect, I experienced firsthand how the current system already works to exclude member voices. Twice, the nominating committee rejected my candidacy despite meeting all qualification requirements and significant community support, forcing the difficult petition process both times.”
The point was made to explain that the petition process as itself is hard. Getting 50 wet signatures is not trivial and as a person who did this process twice I personally attested to this. And so to get 10x-15x more is almost impossible. Where in this example did you find a trace of a personal axe to grind with USA Fencing?
I do think that the nominating committee (N.C>) should work differently they do based on the past two election cycles. I honestly believe that the N.C. unjustifyably removed a few candidates from the ballot – Abdel Salem, Andrey Geva and me. You don’t know me, Bart, so I wouldn’t talk about myself and whether I’m qualified or not, in order to avoid a potential claim of a personal axe in the example below.
At the time of nomination Abdel was a current board member, and Andrey served on several committees before. By all standards both gentlemen were qualified to serve on the board, and Abdel was actually duly elected At-Large Director at the time. There was no reason that he didn’t qualified for the new board, yet the N.C. disqualified him with no reason given. In one article the USFA wrote that not all candidates were promoted to ‘limit the number of options on the ballot’, which is a clear policing of the election process. Why they should decide who would be out of the ballot on behalf of the members? Two people (Abdel and Andrey) did a lot of great stuff for the USFA and were excluded for no reason. So essentially the N.C. took the matter in their hands and decided for the membership who among the candidates would not be on the board. Three of us, Abdel, Andrey and I, went through the process of petition, won it and them two were elected to the board by the members.
So I think this example can definitely point to the fact that the N.C. filtered out candidates before the members have a chance to cast their vote – an anti-democratic process in my option. It’s hard to explain why Abdel, a current board member wass ineligible for the next cycle board, and why Andrey, a previous member of national committees and a former Head Coach of Women’s Epee, the only one who brought us the World Title and the owner and Head Coach of one of the most successful epee clubs in the US, why both of them were not fit to be on the ballot per the N.C.
I think that the N.C. should put a clear criteria for qualification and disqualify againt it (not rank, should be binary disqualification). They should be able to clearly and publicly articulate why a self-nominating candidate did not pass (I think most should go through as most candidates who want to serve on the board would definitely qualify). If, however, the candidate passed the criteria (and overwhelming majority would), he/she should be on the ballot and the members would decide in the election process. In this case the petition process should not exist, as the candidates are disqualified in open and controlled process. Otherwise, as it happened before and what we want to prevent, this is pattern of exclusion.
Does this make sense?
Have you considered that the petition process was hard because you, Geva, and Salem may not be as popular as visionaries as you might think you are in the wider fencing community outside of your, granted, massive, respective clubs? Thanks
I didn’t consider the petition process to be a popularity contest. Each of us completed it within a single NAC, so popular or not, there were enough people to support us. Raising the bar from 50 signatures to 700-800 effectively eliminates even theoretical possibility to get wet signatures. The point of my reply to your comment, however, was not that – the Nominating Committee should not take upon itself a decision to rule out candidates if they qualify per published criteria. This is a decision for the members to take during the voting. Apparently both Andrey and Abdel were popular and supported by enough members to be elected, while the N.C. initially denied their entry on the ballot without any reason given.
Does my answer clarify your question or I still missed something?
A NGB need to serve members’ interest as its top priority. Listen to our voice.
Thank you for your support! Please share it with your fellow fencing friends!
Thank you, Dan Berle, for excellent clarification. I agree.
Already signed the petition. If the board has no say in the setting up of the tournaments and details of the rules and regulations of the sport what is the point of the board? That they delegate the details to the committees doesn’t disconnect their power to set policy and to make decisions that the committees have to abide by. They control what the committees can do through the budget outlines and the overreaching guidance on how the sport will be governed. This absolutely will affect how the committees can implement and carry out their duties.
What is lost by making it easier for people from the fencing community to run for the board? Why limit the the choices before trusting the community as a whole to vote for the best choices to represent our voice?
Thanks Veronica! There are mamy smart people in the fencing community and they all have their best interest to make the sport and the organization better, so if anything it will be for the benefit of the sport to make wider membership elected board
I am a Veteran Fencer. Several times since I started fencing a small group got control. The money went south, tournament formats were bad, directing quality went down and an overall mess resulted. Lets not go there again.
Thanks Robert for your commment! That’s why we need to voice our strong opinion.
Men should compete against men. We live in the United States and the national anthem should be an honorable tradition. Common sense Don’t need FIE’s permission.
Gosh maybe if we dropped the woke tranny stuff we could focus on actual fencing and not this petty NAC location infighting? Crazy idea I know.