I appreciate when USA Fencing tries to improve things for fencers. It’s important, and most of the time things are moving in the right direction. One such example is the significant improvement in event locations, which are definitely more balanced this time. For West Coast families, having two events—the October NAC in Salt Lake City and Summer Nationals in Portland—is fantastic.
Here are the event combinations:
October NAC (10/3-6/2025) – Div1, Junior, Cadet, Para
November NAC (11/14-17/2025) – Div 1, Cadet, Cadet Team, Y14
January JO’s (1/9-12/2026) – Junior, Junior Team, Cadet
February NAC (2/13-16/2026) – Division 1, Junior, Vet, Vet Combined, Vet Team, Para
March NAC (3/6-9/2026) – Y10, Y12, Y14, Div2
April NAC (4/24-27/2026) – Div1, Div1 Team, Junior, Vet, Vet Combined, Para
Summer Nationals (6/27-7/6/2026) – All weapons/age categories
There are also two SJCCs—one in January and one in June.
The biggest change, which I would even call a break from lifelong USA Fencing tradition, is moving the JOs from Presidents’ Day weekend in February to the second weekend in January. Combined with other changes in the national calendar, I believe this is genuinely detrimental for Juniors on several fronts:
- The season is shortened by five weeks, which is crucial time for Juniors to develop and compete.
- They suddenly have only one national event prior to the JOs—the October NAC—whereas before they had both the November NAC and January NAC.
- The January SJCC provides no benefit to those seeking qualification for the JOs. This season we saw the May SJCC being held after the qualification deadline, preventing fencers from participating in Summer National events for which they would have qualified if the deadline had been set after the SJCC. With the January SJCC held after the JOs, it really doesn’t matter since qualification is already closed. This strips Juniors and Cadets of an additional qualification opportunity.
- Being held after the JOs, the January SJCC would have different age categories for aged-out Cadets and Juniors, which provides even fewer opportunities for fencers to compete in their appropriate divisions.
- The qualification period shortens significantly. Usually the regular registration deadline is six weeks prior to the National Event, with qualification ending around the same date or earlier. The usual end of qualifications for JOs was January 11th, but now this six-week registration deadline brings us to the end of November for Cadets and Juniors to qualify for the JOs. This means that all the RJCCs and their combinations from December 1st through January 10th become irrelevant for qualification purposes. What’s the incentive for 2006-born kids to attend Junior events or 2008-born kids to attend Cadet events if they can no longer qualify via Regionals? Experience gained at these tournaments, of course, matters, but one of their major objectives was providing regional qualification path.
- Divisional qualifiers would need to happen sometime in November, further compressing the timeline. Also their positioning now changed since fewer fencers have a potential to qualify via regionals.
The November NAC was traditionally the Y14/Cadet/Junior NAC. Now Juniors are excluded, replaced by Div1. While it’s great to have Div1 representation, it shouldn’t come at the expense of Juniors—especially when their competitive season is already being cut short.
The major reason given for moving the JOs to January is to avoid conflicts with international events. Frankly, upon checking the international calendar, I can’t see how this creates conflicts. The issue with the international junior calendar seems easily solvable—simply don’t designate the conflicting events as qualifying tournaments. There are plenty of others to choose from.
For many people, especially those involved with sub-Junior and sub-Cadet ages or with older ages, all this might seem irrelevant. But it’s actually not. The problem isn’t this specific NAC or that one. The problem is systematic—there appears to be a significant disconnect between what’s genuinely needed for developing competitive fencing in the USA and how the situation is perceived by the national office that creates the calendar.
In the past, I’ve advocated for creating a task force that includes people who understand the situation on the ground. Unfortunately, it seems this fundamental problem persists.
I completely agree. I also didn’t like the removal of Cadet from March NAC.